


Dreams of Forgotten Lives

by BeesOfGallifrey



Series: Hopes and Fears [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Cameos, F/M, Idiots in Love, Mind wipes and fobwatches, Post-Time War, characters who aren't tagged for spoilery reasons, fluff with a hint of foreboding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 54,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeesOfGallifrey/pseuds/BeesOfGallifrey
Summary: The Time War is over, and thanks to the skullduggery of Irving Braxiatel, Leela and Narvin have survived it. One small problem: also thanks to the skullduggery of Irving Braxiatel, they have no memory of who they really are, and are both stranded in London in the late 1890s, living entirely separate lives...





	1. Prologue

Irving Braxiatel placed his hands delicately behind his back, and surveyed the two sleeping figures before him: one human, one Time Lord – though that last point was soon about to change. Leela and Narvin, unknowingly reunited after so long apart.

  
How long _had_ it been? Even Braxiatel was not certain. Temporal war does tend to skew one’s perceptions of the passage of time somewhat. Nevertheless, here they were, together at last after all that time. It did seem a shame to separate them again, given how intimate their relationship had become before the war (they’d kept it a secret, but Braxiatel had known, of course), but needs must, as he so often said.

  
Leela sighed in her sleep. When he had found her, in that hell-hole she’d wound up in after the war had come startlingly to an end, she had been old –very old, and dying, her long-extended lifespan finally catching up with her. He’d soon sorted all of that out, of course, and now she looked as she always did, young and in her prime, strong and ready to spring to action in defence of those she cared for at any minute. He suspected she’d not be thrilled when she discovered what he’d done (as she inevitably would), but he needed Leela alive and well, for the sake of Romana. And hopefully Leela would not get too angry with him, given that it would be his actions that reunited her with Narvin.

  
Narvin. Braxiatel eyed the still figure of the former Coordinator dubiously. Though he had not aged as Leela had, he had not been in a much better state than she had been when Braxiatel had finally found him, in a horrific situation which did not bear thinking about. He was recovering now, of course, thanks to the restorative atmosphere of his TARDIS medical bay, but even so… Braxiatel shuddered. He and Narvin had never exactly seen eye to eye, but the things that had befallen Narvin over the course of the war…. Braxiatel wouldn’t have wished them on his worst enemies.

  
Well. That may have been the teensiest of exaggerations. He certainly wouldn’t have minded if Darkel or someone of her ilk had suffered them. But not Narvin, who, differences aside, he did at least grudgingly respect. Besides, he needed Narvin as much as he needed Leela – or rather, Romana would need the both of them, in time.

  
But not just yet.  
Braxiatel sighed, and turned away, heading for the Console Room. He had false identities to invent, new lives to create. There was work to be done.


	2. London, 1899!

_There was an explosion, and the sound of shattering glass, and the room descended into chaos. The delegate from Unvoss was dead, Narvin spluttering in confusion beside him, then shouting after her in furious rage as she ran off in search of the ill-fated dancer girl…_

_Time reversed, and she was being shown to her room. Again. She tried to explain what had happened, but the dancers looked at her as if she were mad…_

_She was fighting the tin man that was attacking Romana, and it fell, crashing to the floor in a sea of fractured metal…_

Lily Hunter woke abruptly, and sat bolt upright, blinking rapidly and biting back a curse. Robots? _Again_? She would dearly have liked to have had a normal dream for once, without aliens, or killer machines, or explosions, or time travel, or anything else out of the ordinary, for that matter. But no, she was stuck with impossible dreams of murderous aliens screaming about politics. She rubbed her face blearily, pulled back the worn blanket and rose to her feet, wandering over to the grimy window, just as the building shook and the windows rattled with the force of a passing Underground train.

She leaned on the windowsill and gazed through the glass, her eyes drifting from the sight of her landlady shouting at a group of grubby children on the street below to the smoke shrouded rooftops, a series of hulking shapes looming through the early morning gloom, and she closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the shouts and rumbles, and the distant toll of bells, the sounds of a London dawn.

Her mind strayed back to the dream, which was no surprise. She’d always had them, these dreams, and was used to the strange scenarios they showed her, but that did not stop her turning them over and over in her mind, trying to connect them into a coherent story instead of a hazy, confused mess. In her dreams, she lived in a place so far away in both time and space from the life she knew – another planet, in fact, a world where she was a warrior, a world where she was a lone human amongst a race of two-hearted beings who could sense time as surely as she could see or hear, and who could change their faces and their bodies to avoid death. A world where her name was not Lily, but Leela, who looked so much like her but was so very different, a hunter not by name, but by nature.

She did not understand why she had these dreams, nor could she interpret what they meant. They were brighter and more vivid, more solid, more _real_ than the few ordinary dreams she had had. It was true that they faded and lost clarity as time passed, but she remembered them all the same. They all seemed connected too, a series of interlinked events that she was certain were trying to tell her a story. The problem was, she did not seem to dream them in the right order.

She considered the dream of the previous night. She, or rather, _Leela_ , had attended some sort of political conference, where the servants had been machines that spoke with oddly Scottish accents, and the politicians had been monstrous. She had the vague impression that at least one of them had been some sort of giant slug. Another one of them had been blue. Oh, and _he_ had been there. Narvin.

He was one of many of the dreams’ revolving cast of recurring characters; he appeared on an alarmingly frequent basis, matched only by one other, who was a Queen, or Empress, or President, or… or something along those lines. In last night’s dream, Leela and Narvin had shouted at each other, or else ignored each other’s existence entirely. This was not an unusual state of affairs. In some of the dreams, they despised each other. But in others, they were friends, and in others, they were lovers. Lily still had not worked out whether the hatred had blossomed into love, or the love had soured to hate. She hoped it was the former, because whenever she considered the latter the thought made her feel somewhat desolate.

She shook her head sternly. ‘It does not matter,’ she reminded herself, ‘they are not real.’ But that did not change the fact that sometimes, the dreams felt like someone else’s memories, and that despite the many impossibilities, the giant, fat-necked slugs, the references to travelling in time and living on other planets, the dreams _did_ feel real.

She sighed, and turned away from the window. She had another day of heaving trays of bread around the bakery, another day of smiling politely at, and preventing herself from punching, poorly-paid office clerks and dust-covered labourers and their terrible attempts at flirtation whilst they bought Mr Thomas’ pies.

***

The day passed without incident, in the usual haze of bread, pitiful attempts at sleazy winks, and Mr Thomas booming in her ear about things she did not care about, such as horse racing and penny dreadfuls, and the many crimes his rival Mr Collins had committed against baked goods, until finally, aching and covered in flour, Lily was on her way home – but via the tea-room, it being Friday. A mug of tea and a currant bun made by someone other than her employer was her weekly reward to herself, a way of saying ‘congratulations, you survived another week’s toil’.

She turned the corner, and across the road, the tea-room was in sight. She smiled, and heaved a sigh of relief, and began to cross the road. The tea-room’s lamps gave a welcoming glow, the sight a comfort after a particularly arduous week, where the work had been more exhausting than usual, and the dreams more vivid and confusing than ever, and…

Lily froze. There was a man, walking in the opposite direction to her, along the pavement on the other side of the street. To anyone else, he would have appeared ordinary, nondescript, barely worth a second glance. He was neatly but inexpensively dressed, the only hint of embellishment the watch chain at his waistcoat pocket. He had a serious face set into a frown, which seemed accentuated by his expressive eyebrows, his beard was far from any fashionable style, and his hair was thinning underneath his slightly worn hat. He was ordinary. There was nothing about this stranger that should have given her cause to stand and stare at him gormlessly. Except… his existence was impossible. She had neither met nor seen this man before in her entire life – at least, not in her waking moments. This man, this complete stranger, looked exactly like Narvin.

There was a noise behind her, but she barely noticed: she could not focus on anything other than the man. He looked up at the sound, and his eyes met hers, and widened, as if in shock, but then his gaze wavered and flickered behind her, and back to her with an expression of alarm and… was that fear?

She turned around, and realised what the noise had been, and why the man looked so afraid. She had been so distracted by the sight of him that she had frozen in the middle of the road, and the reason for his alarm was all too clear. A hansom cab was bearing down on her, and her mind went blank, swamped with the painful clarity that the terrified face of the driver as he tried in vain to reign in his horses would be the last thing she ever saw.


	3. Familiar Strangers

He didn’t even hesitate. That was by far the strangest thing about it. The woman, who looked so much like a figment of his imagination, was real, and she was standing in the middle of the road, and she was going to die.

He didn’t hesitate. He launched himself at her, without even stopping to consider the potential consequences for himself, the fact that if he failed to save her he would probably end up trampled too. He launched himself at her, and pushed her roughly from the path of the cab. She stumbled and fell, and he fell with her, landing on top of her in a sprawling mess before rolling off of her and landing in a very ungainly fashion in a pile of horse dung. Not the most dignified thing he’d ever done, perhaps, but at least she was alive.

She sat up and stared at him reproachfully. “That hurt!”

He blinked, astonished by her distinctly unimpressed tone of voice. “And being trampled on by horses _wouldn’t_ have hurt?”

“I– Oh. Yes. You… saved my life. Thank you.”

He realised he was still lying sprawled in the horse dung, and hastily scrambled to his feet. He offered his hand to her awkwardly. “Er… allow me to help you up.”

She frowned at him dubiously, took the pro-offered hand, and rose to her feet far more gracefully than he had done.

“Are you…alright?” he asked hesitantly. It was truly extraordinary. She looked just like the woman Leela, the strange warrior who haunted his dreams of far-off planets with orange skies and too many suns.

She nodded. “Yes, yes I am. Thank you.”

It was extraordinary. She even sounded the same. She was staring at him with the same intensity as before, when she’d been standing frozen in the middle of the road, completely oblivious to her surroundings.

He cleared his throat, suddenly very conscious of the way her eyes were flickering over his face, scrutinising his every feature, for the first time painfully aware of the stares of the passers-by around them. The hansom cab had long since disappeared. Had the driver been angry? He hadn’t noticed.  
“It… ahem, it was no problem. Why were you standing in the middle of the road?”

“I…” she frowned again, “I cannot explain it.”

He nodded once, certain that there was a reason, aside from the fact she’d been blatantly staring at _him_ , of all people. He really couldn’t fathom why. What was so special about him?

“Your accent...” she said slowly.

“I… what?”

“You’re Welsh?”

“Well… yes. Is that a problem?”

“Oh!” Her eyes widened and she blushed, “Oh, no, no problem… I just… I was not expecting you to be… Welsh.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That rather implies you were expecting me to be something in particular.”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, her gaze darting everywhere but him – which made a change, after the staring. “I…” She sighed. “You reminded me of…someone. That is why I stopped when I saw you. I was surprised. And the person you reminded me of… He is not Welsh.”

“Oh. That is acceptable, I suppose.” He paused to resolutely quash the nerves that had chosen that precise moment to rear their ugly heads and writhe in his gut like snakes, and said, in a rush, “I’m Neville Jones, by the way, Miss…?”

“Oh!” She smiled broadly, and he found himself blinking at her as though the sun had just appeared from behind a cloud on a gloomy day. “I am Lily Hunter. I am pleased to meet you, Mr Jones. And thank you again, for saving my life.”

“Miss Hunter, you do not need to thank me. It was no problem,” he said, discretely brushing horse dung off of his coat sleeve. He cleared his throat again. “You’ve had a terrible shock. I… er… hope you don’t mind me taking the liberty of asking you if you will join me in the tea-room? Tea is good for shock, they say.”  
He gestured vaguely over the road, all the while internally recoiling in horror at whatever supernatural force had taken possession of his vocal chords. Why on _Earth_ had he asked her that?

She stared at him again, her eyes wide. “Thank you, Mr Jones. I was, as it happens, going there already, but I shall accept your offer. It is the least I can do, since you did save my life. Although…” She frowned and studied him closely. “You look a little pale. It seems as though you have had a greater shock than I have, and so I suspect you need tea more than I do.”

He ought to feel insulted, but she was probably correct. He had been rather shaken by the whole thing, even without surprising himself by asking her to the tea-room. Besides, if she was anything like the warrior woman she so resembled, she was far more resilient than he would ever be.  
He cleared his throat nervously. “Shall we?” he vaguely gestured towards the tea-room again, silently willing himself to stop waving his arms around in the air like a child doing impressions of a flightless bird, or failing that, willing himself to miraculously sink through the pavement and never be seen again.

She nodded. “Yes. Although we should probably check _before_ we cross the road this time.”

He snorted, and then blushed at making such an undignified noise. “That would be wise. Incidentally…” he added, as they carefully made their way across the street, “do I really remind you of someone so much you expected me to sound like them?”

She looked away and stared determinedly at the ground. “Yes. But I would prefer not to discuss it.”

Neville nodded. “As you wish.” He had to admit, it was peculiar that he reminded her of someone, when he could say the very same to _her_. He didn’t, of course, because there was no way of saying ‘You remind me of a woman I frequently dream about who wears animal skins and not much else, shuns societal norms, and regularly threatens to stab people’ that could possibly be considered acceptable in polite company.

They entered the tea-room, accompanied by a faint whiff of horse dung. He drew a seat for her at the table by the window; she raised her eyebrows at him, but said nothing, and took the pro-offered seat with a slight smile. Heavens, that smile was intoxicating. Seeing it up close like this, it was no wonder Narvin had fallen in love with her – well, with Leela. Neville had barely known Miss Lily Hunter for ten minutes, and already he was completely captivated.

* * *

He was Welsh. That was what had really thrown her, perhaps even more so than coming face to face with a figment of her imagination. He looked exactly like Narvin, and though his voice was similar, it was not the same. He was _Welsh_. This startling fact aside, he seemed extremely courteous, and insisted upon ordering on her behalf. She considered protesting, but decided that since he had just thrown himself in front of a horse-drawn cab for her, she would accept his generosity, just this once.

She watched him as he waited at the counter for their tea to be made. The whole situation was utterly bizarre. She had just seen someone who really ought not to exist, who was not who he appeared to be, and he had just saved her life, and was now buying her tea. She considered her excuse for her having been staring at him. It was not a lie, not really. He really did remind her of someone, after all, and so she was perfectly justified in saying so. Just as long as she avoided mentioning the fact that he looked like an imaginary alien from another planet, of course. Blurting out something like that might put something of a damper on proceedings.

He brought the tea tray over to their table, and smiled at her awkwardly as he set it down and took his seat, and shyly pushed a plate with a currant bun on towards her.

“So,” she said, accepting it gratefully, “how long have you lived in London?”

He raised an eyebrow in evident confusion. “Why?”

She shrugged. “I am making conversation.”

“Ah,” he said, “Yes. That is what people do. Um. Yes. I moved here five years ago.”

“Why?”

“Well, I finished my watchmaking apprenticeship. It was a very long, drawn out apprenticeship that took three times longer to finish than it should have done, as the person I was apprenticed to was incredibly slow moving. Beyond the services he offered, there wasn’t a great need for watchmakers where I lived, so when the apprenticeship ended I had to move somewhere that needed me more.”

“But to London? Why? Wales has cities too.”

“Yes. But not in the area I’m from.”

“Oh.” She sipped her tea. “What is that area like?”

He paused, frowning. He did seem to frown an awful lot. “In truth, I don’t really remember it all that well. That part of my life is… hazy. It was very green. Wet. Lots of sheep.” He stared glumly into his tea. “I hate sheep.”

She burst out laughing. “Why on Earth would you have strong feelings about _sheep_?”

“I have my reasons,” he muttered darkly.

She raised her eyebrows, but decided not to press the matter further. Not yet, anyway. She intended to fully investigate the subject at a later date. She paused in the act of tearing a lump off of her currant bun. She had barely known him half an hour and already she was planning future meetings. How very unlike her that was.

“If I may ask,” he said cautiously, “what about you?”

“I also moved to the area five years ago, although I did still live in London before – just not here.”

“I see.” He looked hesitant. He seemed to be struggling with himself, and Lily knew why. She’d seen that face before. It was the effect her distinctly Not-Cockney accent had on people. He was trying to decide whether it would be polite or impudent to mention it. As she had openly questioned him about his origins, she took pity on him and answered his questions before he decided whether or not to ask them.

“I used to live with distant relatives,” she said, “Mother died when I was quite young, and Father could not cope alone, so we moved in with a cousin, who is a priest.”

“Ah. How did you come to be here?”

She sighed, and stared at her tea. “I moved here five years ago, after Father died, and his cousin threw me out. We had had our share of religious disagreements, and he was delighted to have the opportunity to have me out of his way.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Religious disagreements?”

She shrugged. “I disagreed with many of his teachings and interpretations, and was not afraid to tell him so – which I did, quite often. He did not like that very much. The moment the funeral was over, he told me leave and never come back.”

Mr Jones looked somewhat taken aback.

“Do not look so concerned,” she said, smiling faintly, “I knew he was going to throw me out. I had prepared for it. I certainly do not miss him, or his family. Like you it seems, my memories of the past, and of the people I have left behind, are hazy at best. Once I left, I found lodgings here – nothing fancy, but it is all I need – and I work as an assistant in a bakery.”

“Oh?” He eyed the half-eaten bun on her plate. “In that case, should you really be eating the baked consumables of a rival business?”

She grinned. “I am allowed to spend my earnings however I so wish. Besides, I do not like Mr Thomas’ currant buns. They do not taste right.”

He snorted curiously, in what seemed to be an attempt to repress laughter. “Don’t go telling him that, though.”

“I would not dream of it.”

“Hmm. Thomas, you say? Is that Thomas the Bakers up near that second-hand bookshop?” He gestured vaguely towards the window, paused, frowned at his arm, and moved it stiffly to rest in his lap.

She nodded. “Yes. You know it?”

“I’ve walked past it, once or twice – mostly when visiting the bookshop. Even if I’d never been near it, I’d have heard of it, though. The baker I usually go to is always complaining about it.”

She groaned. “Would that be Mr Collins?”

He looked surprised. “Yes! How did you–”

She grimaced. “Mr Thomas and Mr Collins have been deadly rivals for about two decades. They despise each other, and they always have done, though I do not know why. Mr Thomas is _always_ complaining about Mr Collins. I am sick of hearing the name.”

Mr Jones spluttered with amusement, before descending into a violent coughing fit. “Please excuse me,” he choked, as the coughing died down, “I inhaled my tea in surprise. Who knew the world of bakeries was so violently competitive?”

“I did not, before I started working in one. Now I know all too well.” She paused drink more of her tea. “You are a watchmaker, you say. Where is it that you work?”

“I have my own shop, just around the corner from here,” he said, vaguely gesturing further along the road, and then glaring at his arm in annoyance again. She bit back a smile. She was finding this habit he had of unconsciously waving his arms in the direction of whatever it was he was referring to strangely endearing.

“I did not expect to be able to afford my own shop,” he continued, “but…well, it was quite peculiar actually. I had a mysterious, anonymous benefactor buy a newly built property and donate it to me, fully fitted, with my name already above the door. It was unexpected, to say the least – that’s another reason I came here, instead of staying in Wales.”

He sipped his tea, and continued to tell her about the shop, and about clock repairs and watch making in general. As he talked, unexpectedly passionately, she listened and watched him closely, studying his familiar yet unfamiliar mannerisms, and the way in which he spoke, comparing him to his dreamed counterpart. He really did look extraordinarily like Narvin, right down to every last detail – except the clothing, of course. Even the beard was the same as the one Narvin occasionally sported in some dreams. She was quite relieved about that, she realised, given the style of facial hair that was currently popular. An overlarge moustache with twirled ends and a beard styled into a point, as so many men seemed to wear nowadays, would not have suited him at all.

She considered his mannerisms next, and the familiarity of the quirks of his head, the near-permanent frown, the way he repressed laughter but did not fully succeed, so it came out as a snort instead. Other mannerisms, such as the frequent arm gesture, were entirely alien to her. There was one other similarity though, she noted with amusement, and that was that he had, like Narvin, devoted his life to fixing time – albeit on a considerably smaller scale.

He broke off, halfway through a sentence about the difficulties in evaluating the value of second-hand clocks. He grimaced apologetically. “I am so sorry. I must be boring you.”

“No! Not at all!”

He looked down, and scratched at a bit of invisible dirt on the table top. “You’re kind. I do tend to talk about clocks a lot when I meet new people – mostly because that’s _how_ I meet new people, and I’m trying to persuade them to utilise my services.”   
He sighed, and stared morosely into the depths of his tea. “I’m afraid I don’t make very good company.”

She glared at him furiously. “That is nonsense!”

He squinted at her, bemused. “Your eyes were glazing over!”

“I was trying to remember all that you were saying for future reference, in case I should ever need a watch repair!”

“Oh.” He blinked. “Do you have a watch?”

“No.”

“Do you own _any_ timepieces?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“But I might, one day, and it is useful to know what to do if it should break.”

“Ah. Yes. Very wise of you.” He nodded sagely, and finished his tea.

They sat for a while in companionable silence, watching people and traffic passing on the street outside, and sneaking the occasional glance at each other. At least, that was what Lily was doing. She was certain he was doing the same, and that she could feel his gaze darting between her and the window, but she could not be sure.

There was a lull outside, the street empty except for a group of scraggly pigeons fighting over a scrap of bread. She risked another glance at him, only to find that he had done the exact same thing. Their eyes met, and they both blushed furiously, and hastily looked away.

She finished the dregs of her tea, and poked absently at the crumbs on her plate until her face had stopped burning. Night was falling, and the lamps in the tea-room were casting an orange glow through the windows onto the cobblestones outside, giving greater depth to the increasing gloom. They would have to leave soon, she realised. The thought was not a happy one.

“Do you have the time?” she asked him.

“Ah. No.”

She frowned. “I thought I saw that you wear a watch. Was I mistaken?”

“Ah,” he said ruefully, “No, you observed correctly. It’s broken, I’m afraid. I really don’t know why I bother with it.”

There was something about this that struck her as peculiar, but she could not quite put her finger on it. She shrugged, and pushed the thought away. She would figure it out, if it was important, but she doubted it had any real significance.

“Why do you ask? Is there somewhere you needed to be?”

She shook her head. “No, I was just curious. It is getting late.”

He looked rather downcast at that observation. “Yes. I suppose it is.” He scratched at the table again. “I suppose they’ll be closing this place soon.”

“In five minutes, to be precise,” said a tired voice.

They looked around, to find that the woman from behind the counter was standing behind them, giving them an assessing look.

“Ah,” Mr Jones said, “thank you for informing us.”

She nodded, raised her eyebrows suggestively at Lily, cleared their tea-tray away meaningfully and disappeared.

“I suppose we should…” he said, waving a hand vaguely at the door.

“Yes. I suppose we should.”

“Why did she look at you like that? Do you know her?”

“No, but I do see her every time I come in here. I expect she was merely surprised to see me accompanied. Usually I am here alone.”

“Ah.”

There was a silence as they both stared outside. Lily was rapidly realising that she really did not want to leave. They had barely talked at all, merely skimmed the surface of their respective lives, and it was not enough. She wanted to know more about him, mostly to decipher why it was he looked so much like the imaginary Narvin, admittedly, but also because he intrigued her. He seemed awkward and buttoned-up, with his rare moments of boldness unexpected even to him (she suspected that even the act of saving her life had come as a surprise to him), and then of course, there was the matter of his odd hatred of sheep, which she absolutely had not forgotten about, privately vowing to investigate it further.

They glanced at each other, and rose to their feet in unison. He held the door for her, and she waited outside for him. He closed the door carefully behind them, and paused on the doorstep by her side.  
“Thank you for the tea,” she said, “not to mention for saving me earlier.”

He cleared his throat and shuffled awkwardly on the spot. “You really don’t have to keep thanking me for that.”

“If you insist, but I should like to. I quite enjoy being alive.”

“Ah. Yes. That’s reasonable, I suppose.” He cleared his throat again, and studied the ground, intently. “Well, um, it was nice to meet you, Miss Hunter.” He sounded tired, dejected.

“You sound as though you are saying goodbye,” she replied quietly. “There is no need for that.”

He looked at her sharply. “I… I don’t follow you.”

“There is nothing preventing us from arranging to meet again, you know.”

His eyes widened, and she caught within them the tiniest spark of hope. “You… you would like that?”

“I would. You were right, it _has_ been nice to meet you, and I should like to do so again.”

“Oh!” He flushed a furious scarlet. “I… um… thank you. I…er…” He trailed off, and coughed, shuffling awkwardly again.

He seemed somewhat tongue-tied, so she took pity on him. “If we are to meet again, shall we say the same time next week, here?”

He blinked at her, and nodded purposefully in a feeble attempt to hide his relief. “Yes. Yes, I think I can manage that. Good. Well. I shall see you next week, then.”

She smiled. “Yes. I shall see you then, Mr Jones. I look forward to it.”

“Ah. I…yes. Good evening, Miss Hunter.” He paused, and then, almost as an afterthought, blurted, “May I…er… may I walk you home?”

“Oh! It is kind of you to offer, but no. I know the way. Thank you, all the same. Good evening.”

He nodded, and managed a cautious smile. It suited him. It certainly made a change from the near-permanent frown.  
Lily smiled back, turned, and walked away. She paused on the street corner, and looked back. He was still standing there, illuminated by the dimming light from the tea-room. He raised a hand in a careful wave, and inclined his head in her direction. She waved back, just as the last of the lamps was switched off, and he was plunged into darkness. She could still make him out, a shadowy figure in the gloom, his hand still raised in farewell.  
Smiling, she went home.


	4. Parks and Punctuality

_Leela seemed to glow with energy; she was invigorated, youthful, strong, her muscles taut, her hair, previously shot with streaks of grey, now renewed to its shining red-brown splendour. For once he was glad she could not see: otherwise he would have to explain why he was unable to stop himself staring at her, and aside from the embarrassment such an explanation would provide, he wasn’t entirely sure he_ had _an explanation. She looked… magnificent._

_Not that he told her that, of course. “You look… different,” he managed._

_She laughed, face shining with joy, and though he tried so very hard to ignore it, the sight of her made his hearts ache. “I know! I feel it too! And look at my arms, Narvin, the skin is taut, the muscles stronger than they used to be, even before I met the Doctor.”_

_“So I can see…” What did she mean,_ look _at her arms? Oh._ Surely not. _“H-hang on, you–”_

_She grinned broadly, the wild delight in her expression breathtakingly plain to see. “Oh yes, Narvin. I can see again.”_

_She continued to speak, but he wasn’t really listening, his mind pin-wheeling between delight in her having regained her sight, and pure, undiluted panic at_ ‘what if she saw me looking at her? _I don’t even know_ why _I was, how am I supposed to explain it to her? Scientific interest? As if she’d believe_ that!’ _The panic was so strong that when he congratulated her, his voice came out somewhat higher than intended, and he internally winced. He continued to berate himself for being in awe of her, even as she continued to impress him, with her mistrust of the Magistrix, with the lode rod she’d slipped into his pocket, with her fierce refusal of his offer to remain behind. She was human, for Rassilon’s sake; there was no logical reason why he should be so affected by her. She meant nothing to him, she was useful, that was all, and nothing more than that._

_But, deep down he knew, as they infiltrated the vampire nests, as he was injured and she defeated Prydon, as they waited for the Portal to find them whilst he slowly lost more and more blood from his wounds, he knew that was not true._

The clocks in the workshop chimed the hour in as loud a cacophony as ever. Neville woke with a start, and nearly fell off his chair. He rubbed his eyes, and checked the nearest timepiece. It was three o’clock. ‘Napping in the middle of the afternoon, Neville?’ he scolded himself, ‘how very unprofessional.’ The first of the clocks finished chiming, but the ones that ran late and were in dire need of repair took their place, and so the noise continued.

He yawned, as he considered the latest instalment in the never-ending saga of confusion that plagued him as he slept. _Vampires_ , of all things. Preposterous. And the last thing he needed today was visions of Leela looking… looking… How was it that Narvin had put it? _Different_.

He was due to meet Miss Hunter again later that afternoon, and the last thing Neville needed was to be distracted by visions of her doppelganger looking as she had done, not when he wanted to know her for who she truly was, not for who she happened to resemble.

Three weeks had passed since their first meeting, and he remained every bit as fascinated by her as he had been at that first, wholly unexpected turn of events. They had met at the same time and place every week since, and he thought he was even beginning to adjust to this new, pleasant part of his routine. He had discovered that he was already starting to (cautiously) think of her as a friend.

He was still avoiding the subject of the dreams, of course. Goodness knew why she seemed to tolerate his company, but to his considerable confusion, she did genuinely seem to like him. He certainly did not wish to risk scaring her away by mentioning anything even remotely dream-related.

The last of the clocks chimed and the cacophony died away, and the peaceful susurration of the seconds ticking away took its place. He glanced at the assortment of clockwork strewn over the worktop, and winced. He could have sworn it had been considerably tidier before he fell asleep. Clearly he must have knocked some of the parts with his arm, or his face, as he slept. He studied the neatly written list of things he still had to do that afternoon, and sighed.

He strongly suspected that the prospect of seeing Miss Hunter would prevent him from being able to fully concentrate on any of his work, given that he’d noticed that the mere thought of her was becoming increasingly distracting, and so he began to tidy the headache-inducing mess of parts away. If he couldn’t concentrate on his work, then he could at least enforce a little bit of order about the place. This wouldn’t prevent his mind from straying back to her, of course, but at least this way, he felt marginally more productive than if he had tried and failed to work.

*

Nearly three hours later found him staring at two rapidly cooling cups of tea, one half drunk, one untouched, and one uneaten currant bun.

She was late.

He tapped his fingers impatiently on the table, and not for the first time, found his gaze drifting back to the street outside. A hansom cab. A group of labourers on their way to the nearest public house for an evening of drinking. A tall, well-dressed woman in a veil, arm in arm with a shorter woman with dark hair. A grubby child, loitering by a wall with his hands in his pockets. A telegram boy on a bicycle. And definitely no sign of Lily Hunter.

He _had_ arrived earlier than intended, that was true. Tired of sitting in the shop, his mind bouncing from one task to the next but unable to focus on anything other than Miss Hunter, he had left early, deciding it would be better to wait at the tea-room, instead of pacing around the workshop, awash with nervous energy.

It would not have been a terrible plan, had she arrived on time. Instead, it had made a long wait seem even longer, and their tea was going cold, and there was still no sign of her, and he could feel the gaze of the tea-room woman burning at the back of his head, and she still hadn’t arrived, and other customers had been and gone, and Miss Hunter was still not here.

‘What if she’s seen sense and given up on me?’ he asked himself, not for the first time. He had to admit, he would not be surprised if that was the case, given that he was certain that there were brick walls more interesting than he could ever be. He was still amazed that she had wanted to meet him a second time, let alone a third. Perhaps she had seen sense, and the thought of seeing him a fourth time was unappealing to her.

He scratched at the table dejectedly. He hoped that wasn’t the case. He had really been beginning to think – to hope – that she genuinely liked him, that she could even potentially consider him a friend.

A crisp cough interrupted his decidedly glum thoughts. He glanced up to see the tea-room woman surveying him, her arms crossed.

“We’re closing.”

“Ah.” He studied the uneaten bun and the untouched tea. “Um… may I ask if you have any paper at all? So I might be able to wrap this up and take it with me?” He pointed at the bun, and she raised an eyebrow.

“I daresay you can – if you pay for it.”

“Naturally.”

He didn’t leave the vicinity of the tea-room, of course, but simply stood outside it, staring at the street corner. Mercifully, the evening was lighter than in previous weeks, so he wasn’t forced to stand around in complete darkness. Dusk was approaching though, slowly, and an uneasy light seemed to settle on the streets, pale yellow-grey and distinctly uncomfortable.

If he was perfectly honest with himself, he wasn’t entirely certain why he was still waiting. She was either not coming at all, or running spectacularly late. If she wasn’t coming, he was wasting his time. If she was running spectacularly late, well, surely she wouldn’t bother coming, surely she would presume he would have gone home by now? After all, that would have been the sensible, logical thing to do. And yet, he was still here, waiting in an empty street, staring at the corner.

The street was calm now, and quiet. There was the occasional sound of traffic echoing from the larger roads, but here, it was peaceful, unsettlingly so, the absence of life pressing down on his ears, reminding him just how unaccompanied he was.

He scowled and shook his head. This was _hopeless_. He turned to leave, but paused, his foot frozen in mid-air. He could hear… footsteps. They were fast, urgent – someone running, then. It was most likely some street urchin or another running from the police, he knew, but nonetheless, something made him turn around, and look back at the corner.

An achingly familiar figure skidded around the corner, caught sight of him, stumbled to a halt, grinned, checked carefully for any oncoming traffic, and then shot across the street towards him.

“Mr Jones!” she exclaimed delightedly, between breaths, “You are still here! You waited!” She beamed at him, her eyes shining.

“You’re late,” he said, far more sourly than he had initially intended.

“I am sorry,” she panted, “There was an incident at–”

“The tea-room is closed. It has been for some time,” he said shortly. He wasn’t quite sure why he was suddenly so irrationally irritated; being angry at Miss Hunter was certainly not a hill he wished to die on, but now he found himself there, he wasn’t entirely certain how to leave again.

She leaned on the wall, breathing heavily, her face framed by wild red-brown curls that had worked loose from her neatly pinned hair, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed pink with exertion. “I know,” she said, “and I am sorry. I came as quickly as I could, but… well, it is ridiculous. You would think that grown men would be capable of controlling themselves, but no, it seems not.”

He raised his eyebrows, and she stood up straight, her breathing calmer, and shrugged.

“Mr Collins arrived just as we were closing for the day,” she explained, “He was _furious_. His flour had been spoiled, or…or something like that, I do not know. Whatever it was, he blamed Mr Thomas, so of course Mr Thomas accused him of slander, they had a row, and _then_ ,” she paused to grimace in disgust, “and then Mr Collins started throwing things around! I would have hoped Mr Thomas would rise above such pettiness, but no, he started throwing things back! First it was trays, and then it was leftover food! And if that was not enough, they started fighting, and a passer-by outside was so alarmed by the noise he ran off and alerted a policeman, and he arrested them both for breach of the peace, or something like that, and of course, I was the one left to clean up the mess!”

She shook her head in despair. “There were pies _everywhere_. And there was icing off the iced buns all the way up the walls! And then when I _finally_ had it cleaned and managed to close, I ran here as fast as I possibly could, only to find _you_ rude and cold.” She glared at him. “I am sorry that I am late, but you need not be so unpleasant about it.”

He scowled. “That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard! You really expect me to believe _that_?”

She balled her hands into fists and glowered at him. “ _Yes_!” she shouted. “I am covered in _pie_!”

He blinked, and glanced down. Her dress was indeed covered in pastry crumbs stuck to splatters of congealed gravy, and she was still wearing her apron, which was also covered in equally dubious looking stains.

“Hmph.” He crossed his arms guiltily. “You could have at least sent word that you would be late,” he said waspishly, “Would it have been that difficult to pay a boy to come with a message, instead of abandoning me, leaving me sitting there on my own with two cups of tea, looking like a complete fool!”

She pursed her lips and shot him a poisonous glare. “I did not have the chance,” she hissed, “and I am sorry. I have said this already. Why can you not accept this?”

He uncrossed his arms and waved a finger at her, one hand on his hip. “Because… because…”

She snorted. “I did not have you down as being easily enraged, Mr Jones. Serious, yes, always wearing a frown, yes, but quick to anger? No. You surprise me.” She studied him as coldly as she had spoken.

“I-” he deflated. “I’m not, usually. I… I don’t know quite what came over me. I apologise, Miss Hunter, if I have offended you. It sounds as though you have had a trying day, and I fear that I have only made it worse. It is I who should be sorry.”

“Hmm.” She stared at him icily, unblinking.

He swallowed. There was something about that icy glare that was utterly terrifying. Possibly because it reminded him of a certain knife-wielding warrior. “I…er…” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I saved you your bun.” He produced the paper-wrapped bun from his pocket and held it out to her.

She tilted her head to the side, and narrowed her eyes at him. He swallowed again, resisting the extremely strong urge to avoid her gaze and stare at the floor. His stomach was sinking in pure, painful dismay. Had saving the bun for her somehow been the wrong thing to do?

But then she softened, the ice thawing, a slow, delighted smile spreading across her face, and his shoulders sank in relief, both because she seemed pleased with his actions, and because he had resisted the temptation to study the pavement. If he’d given in, if he’d looked away from her, then he would have missed the expression upon her face now.

“Thank you,” she said, “that was kind of you.” She reached out to take it from him, and as she did so, her fingers brushed against his. It was the slightest of touches, lasting the barest half-second, and yet his heart seemed to stutter at it, and he momentarily forgot how to breathe.

It didn’t seem as though she had noticed, however. She was staring at him, frowning. “You did not have to wait for me, you know. You could have gone home when it was clear I was very late, or when the shop shut.”

He sniffed. “Yes, I daresay I could have.”

“Then why ever did you not?”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “Being left waiting alone is… not a pleasant feeling,” he said stiffly.

She narrowed her eyes at him, but they widened as understanding dawned. “You thought I had decided not to come? That I had decided not to see you?”

“No,” he said evasively, shuffling his feet and studying the brick wall behind her intensely. It could do with a clean, he thought. It was really very grubby.

“Mr Jones, I would _never_ be so cruel! I would never arrange to meet _anyone_ then decide not to join them without telling them. If I could not make it, I would send word. Always. I did not do so today because I fully intended to join you.”

“Ah.” He cleared his throat. “I see. Thank you. Ah. In future, could you perhaps send word, should you be running late?”

She nodded. “I shall.”

“Thank you. I… ah. As a watchmaker, I spend my life being on time. I am rather fond of punctuality.”

She smiled wryly. “Of course. Perhaps it is only natural that lateness annoys you.”

“Perhaps.”

She stepped closer, and gazed up at him, studying him closely. “I am sorry, you know. Truly.”

“I know. And I am sorry for being so unpleasant.”

“I forgive you,” she said, a sliver of ice entering her eyes once more, “provided you do not do so again.”

He flinched at the steel in her gaze. “That’s… reasonable,” he managed. She could be very alarming, when she put her mind to it.

“Perhaps, since we have missed our weekly meeting, we should arrange to meet at another time.”

He frowned. “Oh?”

She nodded slightly, tilting her head to the side in consideration. “Perhaps… we could go elsewhere? We could go for a walk somewhere, perhaps in a park?” She eyed him hopefully.

He blinked. “I… well, er…”

She sighed sadly and shook her head. “It was only a suggestion.”

“No! It was a good suggestion! Yes! Let’s go to a park!”

She stepped backwards, eyebrows raised. “There is no need to shout about it.”

“You’re quite right. My apologies.”

“Hmm.”

“Oh, and um… Could we never speak of this incident again? By which, I mean me spectacularly overreacting to your late arrival.”

“Hmm. If you insist. But I have once condition.”

“Which is?”

“That you walk with me as we discuss arrangements for our next meeting further. I am tired, and I wish to return home.”

He swallowed. “I… are you asking me to walk you home?”

“Yes. That _is_ what I said.”

“But… but…”

“You _are_ capable of walking and talking at the same time, yes?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Then there is no problem. You shall walk me home, and we shall discuss our arrangements for… hmm. Shall we say Sunday?”

“I…er…yes. That sounds fine to me. Um.” He waved an arm in the air in a ‘shall we go?’ sort of gesture, and silently cursed. He thought he’d stopped himself from doing that. “Well… Er… Lead the way.”

She smiled and did as bidden, suggesting the names of several parks to him as they went. He nodded as she talked, whilst his mind went round in circles of bewilderment. He had been rude and unpleasant towards her for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, and she had rightly put him in his place, as he deserved, and he had fully expected her to decide he wasn’t worth seeing again, but instead she had taken him up on his thrice repeated, thrice declined offer to walk her home, and they were now doing just that, whilst arranging to meet again. It was safe to say that Neville Jones was thoroughly confused.

* * *

Lily had made sure to arrive at the park far earlier than was strictly necessary, and so she had been standing by the gate for the past half an hour or so, bored, idly watching passers-by. It was a remarkably clear day for once, and she was by no means the only one making use of the weather. A gentle breeze rustled through the trees, ruffling her hair. The new buds were sprouting on the trees, and blossom was starting to appear amongst the bright green of the young leaves. They had certainly picked a pleasant day for a walk.

A nearby church bell struck the hour. It was eleven o’clock, the time they had agreed to meet. She glanced around, through the gate and down both sides of the road. There was no sign of him yet, which meant she was perfectly justified in accusing him of lateness upon his eventual arrival.

She had been rather perturbed by his reaction to her own lateness on Friday. She could understand his being frustrated, but the sudden switch from his usual quiet politeness to rude coldness had been wholly unexpected. He had seemed to feel extremely guilty about it afterwards, embarrassed and ashamed even, and so he should have done, but Lily had to admit that she felt something of the same.

She probably _could_ have found time to let him know what had happened, but the truth was, she knew that if she had done, she would have told him to go home and to not bother to wait for her, and selfishly, she had not wanted that in the slightest. She had wanted to see him, and so she had been delighted to find he had waited – even if he _had_ yelled at her about it.

That feeling of wanting to see him had not faded, far from it.

She glanced around again, hopefully, and there he was, striding down the road beside the park, wearing his Sunday best – as she was – and, as ever, a frown.

Something tightened in her stomach as she stepped forwards to greet him. He stepped through the gate, and paused as he saw her, his frown softening.

“You are late,” she said loftily.

“I– excuse me?”

“The bells struck the hour several moments ago. You are late. And there was me thinking that you are fond of punctuality.”

He raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. “And how long have you been standing here, exactly?”

She grinned smugly. “Oh, not long at all. About… half an hour, perhaps?”

He snorted softly, giving her a shrewdly assessing look. “Proving a point are we, Miss Hunter?”

“With respect, Mr Jones, I have not the faintest idea of what you mean.”

“Hmm.” He narrowed his eyes at her, and she grinned even more. He shook his head despairingly and sighed.

“Something tells me I’m not going to win this particular argument. Never mind. So, shall we?” He gestured along the path, his face twitching crossly in the direction of his hand – fighting the urge to scowl at himself, Lily thought, and she smiled.

“Yes,” she said, and they began walking.

“Is there anywhere in particular you wish to go?” he asked.

She considered carefully, before pointing across the park. “I think there is a pond of some sort over there.”

“Very well,” he said, “we’ll go there.”

They walked quietly for a few minutes, until eventually, he cleared his throat. “So… how are you, Miss Hunter?”

“I am well, thank you. And you?”

“I’m perfectly adequate, I suppose. How was your week?”

“Aside from my employer and his rival fighting like children before being arrested?”

“Er… yes. Apart from that.”

“It was fairly dull, actually. How was yours?”

“No different from the usual. I fixed things, I made things, I went on a house call. There was nothing out of the ordinary really – and certainly no deadly rivals accusing me of sabotage.”

She snorted softly. “You are fortunate. A house call?”

“Yes. They’re always a bit of a chore, but necessary when fixing larger things, such as grandfather clocks.”

“Ah. I can imagine they are somewhat difficult to easily transport.”

“Quite. Hmm. I suppose the particular customer I visited _could_ be considered out of the ordinary – simply because he’s as mad as a box of frogs. I hate having to visit him.” he paused, and looked at her ruefully. “Forgive me, that must have sounded uncharitable – especially given the fact that he always pays well.”

“Why should I forgive you? Forgive you for what? I have not met this person. I cannot tell whether you speak the truth. So tell me: what makes you think him mad?”

“He seems to be quite well-off, yet his house is always freezing, no matter the time of day or year, I always leave with my teeth chattering, and the grandfather clock in question seems to have been made from bits of scrap metal, judging by the number of times I’ve had to fix it. Frankly, it’s a miracle the thing’s ever worked at all. Oh, and I spend the entire time I’m there sneezing because the house is so dusty, he wears his hat indoors to the extent that I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s been glued to his head, I’m certain there’s something living in his beard, and the entire house constantly reeks of fish.”

“Gosh,” said Lily. He nodded flatly. The mere thought of this strange client seemed to have aged him on the spot. Lily smiled to herself. She had the perfect solution for such a thing.

“Perhaps,” she intoned mystically, “he is your mysterious benefactor.”

He rolled his eyes, groaning in despair. She grinned. She had got into a habit of offering him suggestions as to the identity of the person or persons unknown who had donated his shop to him, each suggestion even more daft and outlandish than the last. She did this partly because it amused her to think of increasingly wild suggestions, but partly because she quite liked the effect it had on him.

At every suggestion, his forehead would crease, his eyebrows would knit together, and his nose would wrinkle in confusion at the sheer absurdity of whatever she had suggested, and he would inevitably start to splutter at her in bemused indignation, much to her delight. He complained every time she bought the subject up, but not without a spark in his eye which strongly suggested to her that actually, he found her ideas rather entertaining, but would never dream of admitting to it out loud.

He shook his head at her wearily. “That’s even more absurd than your last suggestion.”

She sighed. “For the last time, it is _entirely_ possible for the Queen to have given you your shop.”

He stopped walking. “You know, I’m starting to get the feeling that you’re deliberately trying to infuriate me – and enjoying it.”

She blinked innocently at him. “Whatever gives you that idea, Mr Jones?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Hmph.”

They continued walking, Lily smirking to herself. She could feel his still-narrowed gaze burning into her cheek, and she grinned even more.

The path curved towards the pond. It was overlooked by a bench; he paused, and gestured at it, an eyebrow raised questioningly. She nodded with a slight smile, and they sat down. They stayed in companionable silence for some time, watching the various kinds of waterfowl that milled around the pond.

They were not entirely alone; a tired-looking governess was holding out a paper bag to three small, well-dressed, highly excitable and mischievous looking children, who were begrudgingly taking turns to take a handful of crumbs from the bag and feed them to the ducks, but who clearly wished to be elsewhere. The smallest child wandered away, stuffing a handful of crumbs into its mouth and reaching out to pet a peculiar looking duck. It snarled, and the child started crying.

The governess hurried to sooth her charge, and she and the children hastily moved away. Lily kept watching the duck, frowning slightly. She could not quite work out why exactly it looked so strange, but she was fairly certain that ducks were not supposed to snarl.

She nudged Mr Jones gently with her elbow. He stiffened, and looked at her, startled. “Um…yes?”

She pointed towards the bird. “That is a funny-looking duck.”

He blinked at her, bewildered. Frowning, he looked to where she was pointing. “That’s a goose.”

“It is a duck!”

“That’s clearly a goose!”

“No, you are wrong, its neck is not long enough to be a goose, it is a duck!”

He sighed, exasperated. “It’s a goose.”

She regarded him coolly. “You are wrong.”

He shook his head wearily. “I despair, I really do.”

She gave him a withering look, and they lapsed into mildly amused silence. He gazed towards the pond, glancing every now and then at the duck, silently mouthing the words ‘it’s a goose’. Lily’s mind wandered back to the dream she had had the previous night. Leela and Narvin had been trapped in a false version of their real world, which was collapsing around them, and they each saved the other’s life as they tried to reach the doorway to the real world. They had refused to abandon each other, and escaped hand-in-hand. ‘ _After all this time it is good to have someone else I can trust_ ,’ Leela had said.

Lily had already come to the conclusion that she trusted Mr Jones, almost instinctively, and she was not entirely sure what to make of that. She could not recall ever having trusted another so soon after meeting them. Even after his unexpected outburst the other evening, she still felt as though she could trust him implicitly.  
  
She had been alarmed and perturbed by his reaction, yes, bemused, definitely, but not scared. She still felt perfectly safe with him, something she was not sure she had ever been able to say about anyone else before. She just could not explain why.

That said, she still was not yet prepared to tell him about the dreams. She suspected that if she did, she would alarm him considerably, and quite probably scare him away, even now they had begun to know each other better. Perhaps one day she might be able to tell him, and perhaps then she might start getting some answers about why she had the dreams in the first place, but not just yet.

“How odd,” he said suddenly, sitting up a little straighter and frowning into the distance.

“What is it?”

“That woman was staring at you.”

“Who?”

“Over there… oh, no, they’ve gone. That was the most curious thing… She was running with some urgency, saw you, did a double-take, and stared at you, and then her companion shouted something at her and they ran off again. How peculiar.”

“Are you sure it was _me_ she was staring at?”

“I’m certain.”

“Hmm.”

“That’s not even the oddest part. As she ran off again, she said, and I quote,” he cleared his throat self-consciously and put on a remarkably accurate Cockney accent, “‘I’m supposed to be serving ale, not running around saving the bleeding world again!’”

He switched back to his own voice, his face slightly pink. “She spared a glance over her shoulder back at you as she ran away though.”

“That is utterly absurd.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Perhaps she was a spy. Or perhaps…” She grinned slyly at him.

He regarded her warily. “Yes?”

“Perhaps it was not _I_ she was staring at. Perhaps it was _you_.”

“Why would she be staring at _me_?”

“Why, because she recognised you as the man she bought a watchmaker’s shop for.”

He groaned. “Miss Hunter… _really_?”

“Do not dismiss it. It is possible. And besides, there is no reason I can possibly think of for anyone to want to stare at me, so it is entirely possible she _was_ staring at you.”

He shuffled uncomfortably, and seemed to waver on the edge of speaking, but then shook his head, and stayed silent. She let him be for a few moments, and leaned against the back of the bench, staring out at the ducks again. The strange-looking duck almost seemed as though it was hiding behind a tree, which was, of course, absurd, so she ignored it, and instead turned back to him.

“I had no idea that you could put on accents so well, Mr Jones. That was most impressive.”

He coughed awkwardly. “I…er…thank you. I’ve lived here a while, I suppose it’s only natural that I’ve picked it up over time.”

“Hmm. I suppose so.” A thought struck her, and she grinned. “Speaking of accents…”

“Yes?” he said warily.

“Whilst you were angry the other day-”

“I thought we’d agreed to never speak of that again!”

“Shush. As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, whilst your voice was raised, your accent got stronger. You sounded more Welsh than you usually do.”

He frowned. “I did?”

“Yes. It was quite sweet actually, even if you were being _infuriating_.”

His eyes boggled. “Sweet?”

“Mm-hm.”

“ _Sweet_?”

“That is what I said, is it not?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re doing it again.”

She smiled serenely. “Doing _what,_ exactly?”

“Trying to infuriate me.”

She gasped in as melodramatic a manner as she could muster. “Mr Jones! I would _never_ dream of doing such a thing!”

He crossed his arms. “Really,” he said flatly.

“Really.” She nodded, shooting him a half-grin. “If I infuriated you, you would leave, and then I would not have anyone interesting to talk to.”

He blinked, clearly thrown by this remark, just as she had intended. “I’m… interesting?”

“Indeed.”

He frowned. “I’m flattered, but… _why_? All I do is talk about clockwork!”

“Yes,” she nodded, “and I have learnt a lot from you. I see a clock, and I can almost hear your voice in my head, telling me about it.”

He looked away. “Please, don’t mock me.”

“But I am not! Mr Jones, I am being serious.” She placed a hand on his arm and he looked at her, startled. “I like learning new things. And you have taught me much, whether or not that was your intention. I admit that I do not fully understand it all, but it _is_ interesting, especially as you are so passionate about it.”

He coloured slightly pink. “I have precious little else to be passionate about,” he muttered, “except perhaps for…” He faltered, his cheeks tinged even more deeply, and he swallowed, and looked away again, discretely moving his arm away from her hand.

“Except for… what, exactly?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

His ears seemed to have started blushing as red as his face, so she reluctantly let the subject drop.

They stayed on the bench for a while longer, in companionable silence once more, politely taking it in turns to sneak a glance at the other. That had become something of a tradition between them, ever since their first meeting. One would glance at the other, who pretended to be entirely oblivious to this, and then their roles would reverse, and the observer would become the observed. They were both fully aware of this happening, of course, but both pretended otherwise, and neither acknowledged it out loud.

Lily studied his frowning face again, committing the details of it to memory, making certain that both he and his appearance were far more vivid in her mind than anything she had ever dreamed. This was real life; he was real, and Narvin was not, their uncanny resemblance notwithstanding. It was Neville, not Narvin, that she was coming to know and to like, it was Neville Jones, and their meetings in the tea-room, and this park, and who knew where else, that she wanted set in stone, preserved in her memories forever.

An explanation for her dreams would be nice, that was true, but it was far from being the most important reason for her pursuing their friendship. She felt she had known him for far longer than she had done – the effects of the dreams notwithstanding. Having him as a part of her life just felt… natural, somehow. That was not to say that she had been incomplete before she had met him, far from it, but there was a certain _rightness_ to knowing him, something that made her think ‘Yes, this is the way things are supposed to be’. Though she had felt perfectly herself before she met him, if they were to permanently part company now, she was certain that she would feel as though something was missing.

He turned towards her and their gazes met. Instead of turning away, she let the contact linger, her stomach fluttering curiously, like the shivering of the new leaves in the spring breeze. He raised a questioning eyebrow and inclined his head towards the path; she nodded, and they rose to their feet, continuing on their way through the park, and perhaps, Lily thought, continuing on their way to wherever this strange new friendship was taking them. Disagreements over punctuality and the true nature of strange-looking waterfowl aside, she was very much looking forwards to seeing where they went next. 


	5. Unexpected Arrivals in the Workplace

Lily leaned against the counter, taking advantage of the lull in the midday rush to take several deep breaths, and to remind herself that she was not allowed to punch the customers, not even the annoyingly flirtatious ones. She was exhausted, and she had half the day still to go.

The door clattered open, the shop bell chimed, as irritatingly cheerful as ever, and a group of labourers strolled in, loudly joking amongst themselves, followed, surprisingly, by a very familiar face.

Lily’s heart skipped a beat, and she blinked several times in shock, her exhaustion vanishing. He was _here_ , in her place of work. Mr Jones was _here_.

He caught her gaze, and smiled self-consciously, his cheeks tinged pink. She smiled back, and one of the labourers followed her line of sight with interest.

“‘Ere,” he said, “what’s this? Miss Lily, don’ go tellin’ me you’ve gone an’ got yourself a sweetheart! You’ll break poor Bill’s heart!”

“Oi! Shut it, Bert!” ‘poor’ Bill protested, flushing red.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Lily said coolly, her face burning as much as Bill’s was. A quick glance at Mr Jones told her that he too was blushing furiously.

“Now,” she said icily, “What will it be? The usual?”

The labourers grunted their assent, their gazes still flickering speculatively between her and Mr Jones, Bert still smirking at her in amusement. As she served them, he kept talking, speculating loudly about the two of them in tones bordering somewhere between innocent gossip and indecent suggestion.

Mr Jones tolerated this turn of events admirably, Lily thought. He had seemingly become fascinated with a patch of the floor, apparently oblivious to all that surrounded him, and was given away only by the fact that his ears still glowed pink.

“You can’t go leavin’ us, an’ goin’ an’ gettin’ married,” said the third of the labourers, “Our breaks won’t be the same without your lovely face brightenin’ our days.”

Mr Thomas appeared, looming in the doorway to the back room. “Who’s getting married?”

Lily inwardly groaned. “No one is getting married,” she huffed, pointedly holding her hand out for payment, scowling.

“Oooh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Mr T,” said Bert, “your Miss Lily’s got herself a sweetheart, breakin’ all our hearts. Won’t be long before she’s left you, an’ I’m tellin’ you, this place won’t be the same without her.”

Lily clenched her fists and tried not to scream.

Mr Thomas raised his eyebrows. “Oh really,” he said, in a tone that signified that he was _greatly_ interested in this topic of conversation, and would be only too delighted to learn more, “and who would that be?”

Bill jerked his thumb towards Mr Jones. “Gent over there.”

Mr Jones shuffled awkwardly under the increased scrutiny, but continued to study the floor tiles intently, his hands behind his back, his face bearing an expression of mild indifference that was betrayed only by how deeply pink he had gone. In short, he was as mortified as she was.

This had gone far enough. Lily slammed the cash register shut. “Mr Jones is _not_ my sweetheart!” she hissed, “He is an acquaintance, a friend.”

Bert sputtered in disbelief. “Nah, come off it Lil, I saw the way you looked at each other! Moment ‘e walked in, moment you saw each other, you both went red as bleedin’ roses!”

Lily stared at him flatly, unblinking, and he instinctively recoiled. “You have bought what you came here for,” she said, in tones that were a lot calmer than she felt, “Please leave, so I may serve the next customer.”

Bert smirked. “Oooh, I hit a nerve. Alright Lil, I’ll get out your hair. Just don’ say I didn’t warn you.”

Grinning, they trooped out, Lily gripping the counter for support, so hard her knuckles turned white.

Mr Jones stepped forwards awkwardly, his hands still behind his back. He cleared his throat. “Miss Hunter.”

“Mr Jones.”

“How are you?”

“Well enough. I… apologise for our previous customers.”

He shook his head. “Don’t. It’s not your fault.”

She bit her lip, and briefly wondered whether she should press the matter and insist upon him accepting the apology, but decided to change the subject. It seemed safer that way, especially as Mr Thomas was still present. “So, may I ask… what brings you here today?”

“Collins’s was shut,” he said, “and…er…” He trailed off, glancing at Mr Thomas, who was casually leaning in the doorway, his arms folded, and his narrowed eyes glittering with interest as he watched their interaction.

“Yes?”

“I… um… wanted to see you,” he said, in a voice so quiet it was scarcely audible.

She swallowed, sensing that her cheeks were starting to burn again, just as the blush from before had started to die down. “I see,” she said, not entirely sure of what else to say. “Collins’s is shut, you say?”

“Indeed. It seems he and his staff have all been taken ill.”

“All of them at once? How… unfortunate.” Lily resisted the urge to look at Mr Thomas, but she strongly suspected he was smirking.

“Yes. Well, unfortunate for them, anyway. Not for me.” He glanced at her, and smiled hesitantly, speaking quietly once more. “It… it means I got to see you.”

She nodded, fighting the sudden urge to leap over the counter and throw herself at him in a violent hug. “I… am glad to see you too,” she said lamely.

He nodded once in acknowledgement, and they stared at each other, before Lily remembered Mr Thomas was still standing in the corner, watching them.

“So, what will you have?” she asked, in her breezy business voice, gesturing at the variety of baked goods before her.

“I don’t know. Perhaps you could… recommend me something?” He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“Very well.” She proceeded to reel off the usual list of recommendations, throwing in some of her personal favourites for good measure, and realised as she did so that whilst he was all too aware of her fondness for currant buns, she had no idea what he liked. She had never actually seen him eat anything. In all their meetings, he had only ever consumed tea. It occurred to her that if there was anyone who was able to live off tea alone, it would probably be him.

He considered his options for some moments, before eventually choosing one of her personal favourites – although she could have sworn his gaze kept drifting towards the plainest, most boring items available. He produced the correct amount of change, gazing at her softly as she took it from him and placed it within the cash register.

“Enjoy your lunch,” she said, and he shook himself slightly, and swallowed.

“I’m sure I will.”

“Good.”

They gazed at each other again, before simultaneously remembering Mr Thomas’ own gaze boring into them, and Mr Jones coughed.

“Well… I had best go. I have a complicated and urgent repair to see to – a cellist came to see me this morning, his father’s watch is badly broken, and the poor man was in considerable distress about it. He considers it his lucky charm; apparently he can’t perform well without it, and he has a series of concerts coming up, and he said all the rehearsals so far have been complete disasters. Superstitious nonsense, of course, but there you go.”

“Oh dear. Poor man. That sounds dreadful. Yes, you had better get back to that.”

“Are you…” he glanced furtively at Mr Thomas, and lowered his voice, “Are you still free–”

“– at the usual time? Yes, of course.”

“Good,” he nodded. “I’ll… see you then, then.”

“Yes. Take care, Mr Jones. It was good to see you.”

“Likewise.” He paused, inclined his head to her, awkwardly did the same to Mr Thomas, and left. He hesitated in the doorway, glanced back, and smiled at her. The door closed behind him, and through the glass she saw his face set into its customary frown as he walked away.

“Well,” Mr Thomas said suggestively, “I hate to tell you, but Bert’s right. You’ll be a married woman… oh, by the end of the summer, at least. You mark my words.”

Lily gritted her teeth and gripped onto the counter again. Having to refrain from punching the customers in sheer frustration was bad enough. Now it seemed her employer had joined the ‘must sadly avoid punching no matter how tempting the thought is’ list too.

“He is a friend I have recently made. A dear friend, that may be true, but that is all he is. He is not my sweetheart, admirer, lover, betrothed, or anything else of the sort.”

Mr Thomas snorted. “If you insist. But the way you were looking at each other? I’m not sure I believe you. It looks to me as if you’re sweet on each other.”

Lily clenched her hands into fists and breathed deeply, forcing herself to remain calm. She frowned, and sniffed the air.

She turned and stared at Mr Thomas unblinkingly. “I can smell burning,” she said flatly.

He blinked, inhaled a deep lungful of air, and paled. “Oh lawks, the pastries!” And with that, he dashed into the back room, leaving her in peace.

“Serves him right for prying,” she muttered, and began aggressively cleaning crumbs from the counter. She followed this by aggressively sweeping the floor, all the while silently fuming.

The joy she had felt at seeing Mr Jones still lingered, but it was soured by the others’ reactions to it. Her relationship with him, such as it was – and she was not yet prepared to examine it, or her feelings, further – was none of their damned business, thank you very much, and although she had been delighted to see him, she sincerely wished that he had picked a better time to turn up, after the rush had died down, and when Mr Thomas was busy baking, and when the shop front was empty of all save for her.

Regardless, it _had_ been good to see him. They seemed to be seeing more and more of each other, of late, and yet it still never felt like enough. Just over three weeks had passed since that first walk in the park, and ever since then, they had continued to meet for a walk every Sunday, as well as meeting in the tea-room each Friday. She now saw him twice a week; to see him a third time was very pleasant indeed, even if it had come with insinuations and unwelcome suggestions from casual observers, suggestions about things that, her affection for him aside, she was not quite ready to confront just yet. Besides, the whole situation had clearly made him deeply uncomfortable, indicating that regardless of what her own feelings may or may not have been, his were simply the feelings of a friend, and the insinuations otherwise had been unpleasant for him to hear. Whatever either of them felt though, she could not dwell on it too deeply now. She was working; she could not afford to get distracted.

A thought struck her. Now he had visited her place of work, and unintentionally disrupted her day, there was nothing to stop her from visiting _his_. Except… his visit had been, ostensibly, to buy lunch. She could not simply drop into his shop; she would need a reason for doing so. She frowned, leaning on the broom handle. It would be convenient if she owned a timepiece of any sort, but she did not. She briefly considered buying one of the ones he had made himself, but dismissed the thought immediately – she had heard enough from him about his craft to know that she would never be able to afford it.

The shop bell jangled once more, as irritatingly cheery as ever, and she put the broom aside to tend to the new customers. The afternoon continued, much as it usually would, but as she worked, a plan formulated in her mind, and at the end of the day, she left the bakery smiling. All she had to do was to keep an eye on the windows of the local pawnbrokers. Where else would she find a broken watch?

* * *

Neville finished writing the last of the addresses, and put his pen down with a sigh. Business had been quiet lately, which did not bother him, just so long as the trend did not continue. The quiet had given him the chance to catch up on all the repairs that needed doing. He’d finished the last of them the previous day, and had spent the first part of that morning writing letters to his clients, letting them know their property had been repaired and was ready to be collected.

He stood up, and left the back room for the workshop, pausing in the doorway, just as the clocks struck the hour, chiming in perfect synchronisation. To his great satisfaction, not one of them was running late; they were all in perfect working condition. The chimes died down, and the soft, ever-present ticking resumed.

He’d send the letters later, he decided, surveying the tidily organised workshop area and the shop front beyond it. The street outside was quiet, and his shop even quieter. After careful deliberation, he decided to make a start on replenishing his stock of handmade timepieces. It was what he preferred to do, after all, but these days, he scarcely had to the time to make anything from scratch unless it was for a specific commission; it felt as though he spent all of his time on repairs. Starting work on building a new pocket-watch seemed as good a use of his time as any.

He sat at his workbench, his back to the shop front, and set about organising the various tools and parts he required, and before long, he was hard at work. As he settled into the rhythm of construction, his mind – perhaps inevitably – wandered. Not for the first time, he found himself dwelling on that first visit to Miss Hunter’s bakery and all that had occurred there. Nearly two weeks had passed since then, and that day had never really left his mind.

He had stayed away for a couple of days after that, to avoid any further awkwardness, but that Friday at the tea-room, she had suggested that he need not avoid the bakery altogether, but instead could simply adjust his time of arrival so it did not coincide with the midday rush. It would throw his daily routine out of sync, and would confuse his opening hours considerably, but it was a good idea nonetheless. It was, in fact, the obvious solution, and he was a fool for not thinking of it sooner.

After that particular conversation, he had visited the bakery a number of times. He would have gone there daily, if he could have, but he did not think that was a particularly wise course of action. He did not want to push his luck, or overstay his welcome, and besides, it would have been highly improper. He had instead decided that visiting once or twice a week would be more than acceptable. After all, it meant he was now fortunate enough to be able to see her three or four times a week, something he would have considered highly improbable when they first met, just over two months ago now. Good grief. Was that really all it had been? How short a time that seemed. They were seeing each other so frequently now that it felt as though it had been so much longer than that.

He reached for one of the delicate metal springs he had lain out neatly in a line before him, and his thoughts strayed to the unwelcome comments of the labourers, and their insinuations of his and Miss Hunter’s potential impending marriage, and his cheeks warmed. Though the entire incident had been excruciatingly embarrassing, he had since discovered that every time he remembered their suggestions that he and Miss Hunter were romantically involved, he felt strangely warm and fluttery, his heart stuttering like a faulty second hand on a battered old clock, stuck between one second and the next, leaving him unsteady and light-headed. Oddly, it was not an unpleasant feeling.

Naturally, he didn’t let himself consider what that meant for him, didn’t dare to let himself think about anything beyond that. That would have dangerous territory, somewhere he had no right to trespass.

Not that his own feelings, whether they were the warm and respectful regard and affection of friendship, or something else entirely, mattered in the slightest, of course. How he felt was irrelevant. He had seen how she’d reacted to the suggestion that they were bound to end up married. She had been mortified, and had vehemently denied it. The prospect of marriage clearly appalled her. Not that it was something he neither wanted nor expected of her, good grief no. That would be absurd. Ridiculous. Preposterous.

He fumbled the tiny cog he was holding; it rolled off the worktop and landed on the floor with a tinny pinging noise. He sighed, and clambered down to the floor to search for it, patting the floor and shuffling about on his knees.

If anything, the bakery incident had served to prove to him beyond question how she saw him. She had stated, quite clearly, that he was her friend. Simply to hear her say that out loud had been wonderful; it had almost entirely erased his doubts about why she put up with him. She called him her friend. She was not merely tolerating his presence, she really did enjoy his company – something she had repeated several times before, yet he still found somewhat improbable.

His hand slid over something small, cold and metallic. He’d found the cog, much to his relief, and so he rose, and sat back down, placing it on the worktop. He picked up the half-constructed clock mechanism, frowning as he tried to remember where it was he had got to. It occurred to him that feelings could be as complex and as fiendishly delicate as clockwork, except he was considerably less equipped to deal with them.

The shop bell rang as the door opened, and he looked up, glancing over his shoulder to see who it was. He dropped the half-built mechanism in surprise. It broke, but he suddenly found he didn’t care. He would have to start it again later, but that was a very small price to pay, for Miss Hunter was in his shop, grinning broadly at him.

“Mr Jones! You are busy?”

“I…No, not at all!” He jumped to his feet, his chair making an unpleasant scraping noise against the floor in his haste to stand up, and he hurried to the counter.

“You’re here!”

Her smile widened. “Yes, I am.” Her eyes darted around the shop, taking in as many details as possible. “It is very noisy in here,” she commented.

“Is it?”

“The clocks… the ticking… there is so much of it.”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose there is. It’s background noise to me now, I barely notice it. Except when they chime the hour, of course. It’s hard _not_ to notice that.”

She grinned. “Yes, I can imagine that is somewhat distracting.”

“So… why are you here?” he asked, adding hastily, “It’s wonderful to see you of course. But… why?”

Seemingly out of nowhere, she produced a battered looking pocket-watch, and smiled a smile that seemed to hover somewhere between smug and bashful, which was quite an achievement, Neville thought, as it would have looked absolutely ghastly on anyone else, but Miss Hunter remained as captivating and otherworldly as ever.

“I have a pocket-watch,” she announced solemnly, “It is in need of mending. I know of no-one else who can succeed in this task.”

He raised an eyebrow, flattered, but bemused. She made it sound as if he was to be sent on an arduous quest, not as if he would be fixing a watch. Something occurred to him, and he frowned at her, narrowing his eyes with suspicion.

“Wait a moment… I thought you said you didn’t own a watch?”

She bit her lip and shrugged. “It is true that I did not…then.”

“You… bought a watch?”

“Obviously.”

His eyes narrowed even further, and he tugged it from her grasp, breaking eye contact so he could study it closely. Even without looking at her, he could sense her smiling slyly at him. He shook the feeling off, and focused on the watch. It was very battered, and very old, and very ugly; it was covered in dents and scratches, and looked as though it had been trampled by a herd of wild horses before being dropped from the top of the Houses of Parliament. He moved away from the counter, and returned to his workbench, very conscious of her gaze boring into his back. Delicately, he prised the pocket-watch open, and examined the interior workings. It took only the slightest glance to know that the watch had not worked in a very, very long time.

He sighed, and turned around. “Miss Hunter, did you deliberately buy a broken watch?”

She bit her lip again, placed her hands behind her back and stared innocently at the ceiling. “Perhaps.”

“ _Why_?”

“Oh, there was no particular reason. I was passing the pawnbrokers and I happened to see it in the window, and so I thought I’d buy it.”

“ _Why_? Please don’t tell me you thought it attractive.”

She snorted with extremely unladylike laughter; Neville temporarily forgot how to breathe. “Heavens no, it’s hideous!”

He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank Goodness for that. For a moment there, I thought you had terrible taste.”

She grinned at him again. Dear Lord, she _had_ to stop doing that. He was becoming increasingly certain that one day she was going to smile at him and his heart would stop and he’d never recover. “Would it bother you, if I did have terrible taste?”

“No!” He paused, and considered it further. “No…not at all.” He paused again. “Perhaps… a little.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. He decided it would be in both their best interests if he altered the course this conversation was taking, immediately.

“So, if it was not for reasons of aesthetic appreciation, why _did_ you buy this non-functional monstrosity?”

“How badly damaged is it?” she asked, ignoring him, “can you fix it?”

He sighed, exasperated. “Yes, _of course_ I can fix it. It will take time, but I can do it, but-” he added, as inspiration struck him, “I shall only mend it if you tell me _why_ you wasted your money on it in the first place!”

She screwed her face up at him, and huffed loudly, and, to his great interest, a faint blush appeared on her cheeks. “If you must know, I bought it… I bought it purely so I could get you to fix it. I wanted an excuse to visit your shop. Satisfied?”

She glared at him defiantly. She was definitely blushing now. How intriguing.

He fought back a smug grin of his own. “Yes, I think so. And for that admission, I shall fix it free of charge.”

“You do not have to-”

“I insist,” he said firmly, “I let my curiosity get the better of me, and in doing so I may have caused you discomfort. For that, I can only apologise, and so I shall fix your watch, free of charge.”

She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, and then shrugged. “Very well, if you are going to be quite so insistent about it. May I observe?”

He frowned. “What?”

“May I watch you as you mend it?”

“I… you…what?”

“I said –”

“I heard what you said, I just… Well, no-one has ever asked to watch me at work before.”

She smiled. “There is a first time for everything.”

He nodded, quashing the nerves that had chosen this precise moment to flood through him. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to end up a quivering wreck on the floor. He cleared his throat, crossed to the hatch in the counter and opened it. “Indeed there is. If you would like to come through, Miss Hunter, and I shall find you a chair.”

“Thank you,” she said, crossing into the workshop, “Oh, and one more thing…” she paused, and looked him in the eyes. “ ‘Miss Hunter’ is so formal. Please, call me Lily.”

Neville stopped breathing. His cheeks were warming, as were the tips of his ears and his neck. He strongly suspected that even his toes were blushing. He swallowed.

“Very well, Miss-” he stopped, forcefully cleared his throat in the desperate hope that his voice would stop that undignified, high-pitched squeaking it was doing, and tried again. “Very well, _Lily_. And, er…” he swallowed again, “if you wish, you… may call me Neville.”

She beamed at him. “I should like that very much… _Neville_.” She smiled at him even more broadly, somehow, and he felt his cheeks grow warmer. 

They held each other’s gaze for several long moments, and he was gratified to see he was not the only one blushing; there was a definite pink tinge to her cheeks. He swallowed, yet again, and turned away, resolutely ignoring the part of his mind that was doing its utmost to meticulously analyse every minute detail of this particular interaction.

They sat down, and he set to work on the abominable timepiece, complaining about its many shortcomings whilst privately enjoying the challenge it presented, all the while acutely aware of the intensity of her gaze as she watched him. He knew full well that once she had gone, and he was alone, the parts of his mind prone to overthinking would immediately and annoyingly enthusiastically dissect everything that had occurred in the kind of meticulous analytical detail he was currently avoiding, and there was nothing he could do about it.

But, he reflected, that seemed a small price to pay for the monumental privilege of being able to enjoy the simple pleasure of her company.


	6. Secrets Revealed

Neville stared into the mirror. He wasn’t often conscious of his physical appearance; it was usually something he paid very little attention to, and yet there were sometimes occasions when he was painfully aware of it. 

This was one of those days. Today, it was not due to the fact that he was spending so much time with Lily Hunter that he was acutely aware of how dazzling she was, and how occasionally, for reasons of both appearance and personality, he felt like a raincloud intruding on her summer’s day. That was happening less frequently recently though, and he wondered vaguely whether some of her glowing positivity was starting to rub off on him. Regardless of whether or not that was the case, this was not the reason why he was staring uncertainly at his reflection today.

No. Today, as had happened several times before, he had glanced in the mirror only to see a shadowy figure from his dreams staring back at him.

Normally if this happened, he simply told himself he was being ridiculous, and that was the end of it, but today, for some unknown reason, the unsettling feeling of staring into someone else’s reflection persisted.

He closed his eyes.

Perhaps it was to do with the dreams, although there hadn’t been anything particularly alarming, lately. Last night’s certainly hadn’t been anything new or especially vivid, merely a repeat of an old dream where Narvin stands beside Leela, and complains to her about the unnecessary grandiosity of the ceremony that was taking place. That dream had faded and bled into another, this time one of the highly uneventful dreams in which Narvin sits at his desk, doing paperwork. Nothing particularly distressing there, then.

Perhaps a more likely explanation for the illusion was simply tiredness, intermingled with nerves about the decision he had made regarding Lily.

He was going to tell her about the dreams.

It was risky, he knew, but he felt that if he kept silent about it any longer, he would be deceiving her. He still wasn’t certain about the exact nature of their relationship, nor of where it was heading, but he knew he did not want to lie to her, about _anything_. And avoiding the subject of the dreams felt an awful lot like lying. 

He wasn’t certain why he had so suddenly concluded that he was going to tell her, though he suspected it was to do with her suggestion that they start using each other’s first names. Just when he thought he had her feelings pinned down, just when he thought he knew how she felt for him, she pulled the rug from underneath his feet and sent him pin-wheeling to the floor with four simple words: “Please, call me Lily”.

His previous conclusions as to her friendly regard for him had been left shattered, misshapen and confused, and days later, he was still reeling. In the evening, after she had left his shop, and after the shock at both her visit and this newly informal way of addressing one another had faded, he had realised that the warm glow he felt every time he thought her name was no longer something he could ignore, or push to the side, or pretend meant nothing at all.

And if he acknowledged that he felt… something important for her… Well. The realisation, though surprisingly pleasant, meant he could no longer think about the dreams without a hint of panic. Now, every time he considered continuing along the path they were on, wherever it may lead, without saying _something_ about their imaginary counterparts, he found himself overwhelmed with nausea-like guilt.

He opened his eyes, and looked into the mirror. Neville Jones, watchmaker, stared back at him, wearing a determined frown. He straightened his tie, and put on his jacket and hat.

He was going to tell her. He had to.

* * *

Lily stood beside a lamp post, leaning on the iron railings and gazing out across the Thames. The tide was out, and on the river beach below her, mudlarks roamed, ankle deep in silt, looking for washed up treasures to sell.

She tapped her feet impatiently, biting her lip as she glanced up and down the street, searching for a familiar face and finding no-one, before gazing across the water again with a sigh. She was due to meet Neville any minute now, and she could not recall ever having felt so nervous about it before. Her hand rose to touch the watch he had mended for her, which was considerably less miserable looking than it had been when she bought it. She now wore it on a chain like a necklace, under her dress, close to her skin – and close to her heart.

Since the incident in the bakery, she had been more honest with herself, and was glad of it. As annoying, intrusive, and unwelcome their comments might have been, she was beginning to strongly suspect that the insinuations and suggestions of the labourers that day were not too far removed from the truth.

She cared for Neville, a great deal, and the thought of that was a comforting one that settled deep in her chest and burned there, the warmth of it bringing happiness to her otherwise repetitive and uneventful life. Every time they met, she went away smiling, looking forwards to their next meeting before they had even finished saying goodbye.

Though the revelation of her feelings was welcome, it bought fear in its wake. She knew with painful clarity that she would have to admit the full truth about why she had been staring at him in shock the day they first met. She was going to have to tell him about her dreams.

Well. She did not actually _have_ to tell him, she knew that, but somehow the thought of staying silent just felt… wrong. It felt as if she was concealing a vital part of herself from him, as if he could not possibly know her until she had explained all. She wanted to know him as well as she possibly could; it was not unreasonable for her to expect him to want the same in return. And besides, talking about it with another person, instead of asking herself the same questions over and over again, might start providing some answers as to why she had the dreams in the first place.

That said, she did not think it would be wise to go into minute detail about it all – at least, not yet, especially given the rather close nature of Narvin and Leela’s relationship in some of the dreams. She was, after all, not a complete fool. Wherever their real-life relationship was taking them in waking hours, she did not wish to confuse matters by bringing up their imaginary counterparts’ relationship. She could not imagine that would go down particularly well, and besides, it would probably alarm Neville even more than her admission was already going to.

And he would be alarmed, of that she was certain. Not for the first time, she found herself wondering whether telling him was a terrible idea, and whether their growing closeness had skewed her perceptions and made her think it necessary to talk about the dreams, when talking about them was something she had long avoided. She had never spoken about them to _anyone_ before, let alone with the person who featured in them, the person she was quite probably in lo–

“Lily?”

She turned, startled. He was standing right beside her. 

“Neville!” 

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you.” 

She shook her head. “Oh no, it is quite alright, I was miles away.”

“Ah.” He hesitated. For some reason, he looked as tense as she felt; he held himself more stiffly than usual, and his hands were clasped behind his back. “Shall we walk?”

“No. I am alright here, for now.”

A flicker of concern flitted across his face, but he nodded. “As you wish.” He leaned his elbows against the railings, and joined her in quietly gazing out across the river.

They stood there for some time, watching the boats on the water and the mudlarks on the shore, Lily growing increasingly nervous about the coming conversation, her stomach twisting itself in knots. She glanced sideways; he was scratching at a patch of rust on the railing, and frowning. Perhaps he had sensed her nerves and believed she was cross with him for some reason.

She looked across the water again and held back a sigh. This was ridiculous. ‘Be brave’, she told herself, ‘have courage. If the one who wears your face in your dreams were here, _she_ would be brave, and would be disappointed in your cowardice. So get on with it and _tell him_.’

She turned to face him. “I have something I need to tell you.”

At the exact same moment, he looked at her and said, “There is something I must talk to you about.” 

They paused, and grinned at each other sheepishly. Lily relaxed a little. “After you,” she said, grateful for the reprieve.

He shook his head. “No, you go first.” She started to protest, and he held a hand out to stop her. “No, I insist. One of us has to go first, otherwise we’ll be here all week.”

“I agree. So tell me what it is you wish to talk about.” She raised her eyebrows at him meaningfully and he sighed, defeated.

“Very well, since I can see I’m not going to win that one.” He stared out across the water for a few moments, and then looked back at her – or, more accurately, at the lamppost behind her – and sighed.

“What I have to say… you may find it distressing. But please, hear me out, do not be alarmed. I’m telling you this because I feel it would be deceitful of me to continue our… our friendship and remain silent.” He paused, and met her gaze uncertainly.

“Go on,” she murmured.

He nodded, frowning for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. “Ever… ever since I can remember, I have had the strangest of dreams, dreams in which I am another person, who looks the same as me but is not the same, a person who… who isn’t even human.”

Lily went cold, her heart racing. She could scarcely breathe. _What if_ …? No. It _had_ to be a coincidence, surely. It _had_ to be.

He continued, in increasingly apologetic tones. “As I said, I have always had these dreams. I do not know when it was they started, but it was long before I met you. I say this, because there is a… a character, in these dreams, someone who appears in many of them, and she… she looks like… well, she looks like you.”

He looked at her, frowning in concern, more uncertain than she had ever seen him. “Lily, you’ve gone very pale. Are you… alright?”

Lily could not speak. This was impossible. _Impossible_.

“Lily?”

“I am fine,” she said hoarsely, her voice shaking.

“Without sounding indelicate, you really don’t look it. I am so sorry, I’ve alarmed you, I should never have said anything. Perhaps you need to sit down?”

“No, really, I am fine…”

“Please, won’t you sit down?” he begged, gesturing to a nearby bench, “I’m not certain I’d know what to do if you were to…to black out.”

“I am Lily Hunter, baker’s assistant,” she protested, “I do not ‘black out’.” But she let him usher her over to the bench all the same.

He cautiously perched on the edge, watching her with evident concern. She breathed deeply for a few moments in an attempt to regain at least a little of her composure, and forced herself to speak.

“In these dreams,” she said, her voice shaking more than she was entirely comfortable with, “the person you dream yourself to be… is his name… is his name… Narvin?”

Neville froze, staring at her with wide eyes, his mouth moving silently, his face growing pale. “How…?” he breathed, “how did you… you…?”

She ignored the question and swallowed, her heart hammering so fast she thought it might jump right out of her chest. “And the woman who looks like me… is her name… Leela?”

His mouth dropped open, and his eyes took on a slightly wild glint that hovered somewhere between awestruck and terrified. “ _Yes_! Lily… _how_ did you know that?”

She gently took his hands, and he blinked at her rapidly, his face a perfect picture of bewilderment and surprise. She stared at him for several seconds, trying to remain calm enough to speak, trying to persuade her heart rate to calm down a little. When she eventually managed to speak, her words tumbled out in a rush.

“Because you have told me the exact same thing I was going to tell _you_. I have long had strange dreams where I am not Lily, but Leela, who lives on a strange world with orange skies, amongst people who look human but are not, and one of these people looks exactly like you, and he is called Narvin. That is why I was staring at you, when we first met, for I was so startled to see someone I thought existed only in my head. That is why I was surprised by your accent, too. Narvin is not Welsh.”

He stared at her, unmoving for several long moments. She still held his hands; they shook a little, and just as she was about to tighten her grip and squeeze them reassuringly, he shook himself and pulled away from her grasp, collapsing against the back of the bench and running his hands through his beard.

He shook his head, blinking rapidly. “We have the… the… the same…”

“We have the _same dreams_.”

He met her gaze, and they stared at each other, both struck senseless by this startling revelation. 

“We have the same dreams,” he repeated in wonder, and gave a shaky laugh. “I need not have been so worried about telling you about them after all.” 

She smiled crookedly. “Nor I about telling you.” 

He gave a weak laugh, at that, and her smile grew. She still felt shaky; her heart rate had mercifully settled, but now she felt strangely lightheaded.

“This _has_ to mean something,” she said.

He frowned. “It… it does?”

“It must, surely? Two people who have the same impossible dreams... Or at least, parts of them seem the same. Tell me, the world they live on, in your dreams, does it have a name?”

“Er… yes, as a matter of fact it does. Gallifrey.”

She gasped. “It is called that in mine too! And its people… can they travel in ti–”

“In time? Yes, they can!”

They gazed at each other in awe, Lily now positively giddy with exhilaration. This was not exactly _answers_ , as such, but if anything, it was far, far better.

“I wonder…” he began, before trailing off, his gaze unfocused.

She gave him a few moments grace before her impatience took over. “Yes?” she prompted. 

“I wonder whether the events in my dreams correspond in any way with yours, or whether yours might fill in the gaps in the narrative in mine – and vice versa.”

“Yours tell a story too?”

“Yes. At least, it certainly seems that way, although if so, it is incomplete and distinctly non-chronological.”

“Mine are like that too! It does get very confusing sometimes. Oh, it is _good_ to be able to talk about it at last! How many of yours do you remember?”

“I have them all written down,” he said, “or at least, the past five years’ worth. I don’t know what happened to the older notes – I think I must have lost the notebooks when I moved here.”

She blinked. “You have them _all_ written down?”

He nodded. “Indeed. I write every single one of them down, in as much detail as I can remember.”

“Oh.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Something tells me you haven’t done the same.”

She shook her head ruefully. “I do write them down… sometimes… when I remember… which is not often. And the ones I did record are not written in detail… But I do remember a lot of them well, without writing them down.”

He sighed in mock despair. “Lily Hunter, what are we to do with you?”

She shrugged, grinning, and not just at his melodramatic acting. The tension was gone, the nerves had faded, and to her great relief, she could enjoy his company without fear once more.

“Hmm.” He was frowning again, but in deep thought. “Would it be possible for you to jot down the dreams you do remember, but haven’t yet recorded?”

“Yes, of course. But why?”

“Well… I was thinking. Perhaps we could… compare notes?”

“You think that if we compare our dreams, we may be able to order them, to fill in the gaps?”

“Perhaps. I hope so. It’s not certain, far from it. But if there’s one thing I _do_ know for certain, it’s that I would very much like to know how their story ends.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I would like to know that too.”

“And besides, perhaps if we work out what that story is, we may be able to work out why we both dream it in the first place.”

She frowned dubiously. “I doubt it, but it is worth a try, at least.”

He nodded. “Oh, I know. This whole situation is an enormous impossibility. It’s hard to know what to make of it, or where to go next.”

She smiled at him, and took his hand. He frowned at it for a minute, uncertain, before slowly wrapping his fingers around hers.

“I am relieved we have made this discovery,” she said, “I thought perhaps I was going mad.”

He smiled wryly. “So did I. And I’m glad too.”

“I think these dreams are a gift, not a curse or an annoyance as I always thought they were,” she said slowly, “and I think… I think they must mean that… that we were meant to meet. And that is a strange comfort, in a way.”

He said nothing, only frowned, and she regretted speaking, worried she had made him uncomfortable. But then his face softened into an expression of thoughtfulness, and slowly, he smiled, and squeezed her hand.

“Yes. Perhaps we were.”


	7. Comparing Notes

Lily approached Neville’s shop, smiling in anticipation of the day to come, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun on her face. They had decided to forego their usual walk in favour of comparing notes on their dreams, and there was every chance that they would do so all day. She sincerely hoped that would be the case, as an entire day in his company would be a great improvement on the couple of hours they usually spent on their walks – although admittedly, their walks seemed to be getting longer, of late.

The door to the shop was shut, and the sign that hung in the window read ‘Closed’. Lily knocked, and waited impatiently, but there was no response. She frowned, and tried the handle. It was not locked; the door opened, and the bell chimed loudly. The noise of it was a stark contrast to the quiet of the workshop, the only sound the soft ticking of the current selection of timepieces.

Lily stepped into the workshop and closed the door behind her. There was no sign of Neville. All was quiet, and still. She crossed the shop, let herself through the counter hatch, and crossed the workshop slowly, letting her eyes drift over the neatly organised and extremely well-labelled drawers of tools and clockwork. Everything was spotless; nothing was out of place. All was exactly as she would have expected of him.

She reached the door to the back room, paused, and smiled.

Neville was at his desk, fast asleep, his head resting on the scattered papers on its surface. His jacket hung on the back of his chair, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up; she had never seen him look quite so dishevelled.

She crossed the room, and gently shook his shoulder. “Neville?”

He jerked awake and sat bolt upright. “ _RISOTTO!”_ he yelled groggily.

“Neville?”

“Mmmf? Oh, Lily. Hello.”

“Hello. You have paper stuck to your face.”

“What?” he said distractedly. “Oh.” He removed the offending sheet and placed it carefully on the desk with the rest of the papers, then grimaced as he caught sight of the disarray. “Oh dear.”

“You have had a late night?”

“Yes. I was trying to get things in order so we could start straight away.”

“Ah. May I ask…. ‘Risotto’?”

He rubbed his eyes wearily. “You know, I really have no idea. Sometimes I can follow what happens in the dreams, and other times, I wake up completely bewildered.”

“And this is one of those times?”

“Most definitely. Please, do sit down. Would you like some tea?”

“I would, thank you.”

He nodded. “I won’t be long.” He stood up, glanced down at himself, pulled an agonised face and turned faintly pink as he realised quite how dishevelled he looked, rolled his sleeves down, hastily shrugged on his jacket, and disappeared up the stairs.

She pulled up a spare chair, picked up the nearest notebook, and started rifling through it, quietly impressed but not at all surprised by the level of detail he had recorded his dreams in. Whilst she had only ever jotted down the main events, when she remembered to, he had painstakingly recorded every single detail he could possibly remember, including as many spoken words as possible, and including the surroundings. He had also annotated them, in some places, linking certain parts of one dream to another, or else theorising on what certain events or occurrences could mean.

She let her eyes drift over the pages; extracts of entries jumping out at her as if fighting for her attention, all clamouring to be read.

_‘…to which Narvin replied ‘‘Would anyone else care to join this conga over Rassilon’s grave?’’ I am not certain of the meaning of this outburst…’_

_‘…helping with the construction of some sort of weapon, I cannot recall the exact name, ‘Time Fusing Device’, perhaps…’_

_‘…screaming in pain as his lives are stolen…’_

_‘…the president collapsed, her mind overwrought…’_

_‘…complaining about alien students with Inquisitor – I am not certain how her name is spelled – Darkle? Darkell? Darkel?’_

_‘…shouting match over something pointless and trivial with Leela…’_

_‘…was injured by an explosive device trying to save the president…’_

One particular entry caught her eye, and she stopped to read it more closely.

_7 th October 1894_

_Narvin (bearded) was with Leela, in her quarters (rather messily furnished, with multiple animal skin throws over the furniture, and several alarming displays of knives). They were sitting on a sofa, very close together, leaning on one another and holding hands, watching moving pictures on a screen; it sounded as though someone in the moving pictures was reading a newspaper out loud. I do not think they were very impressed with what they were being told, for they switched the pictures off after a little while. They sat in worried silence for a short time, their grip on each other’s hands growing tighter, before turning to one another for support_ – and here, his handwriting shrank in size until it was barely legible – _and they started to kiss each other, before eventually retiring to her bedroom._

This entry was followed by a note, which read:

* _I had previously concluded that they mutually despised each other. Clearly, I was mistaken._

So, Neville was aware of their imaginary counterparts’ relationship in some of the dreams, then. Lily could not help but wonder what he thought of it. The decrease in the size of the writing suggested intense embarrassment – although it _had_ been written almost five years ago. Perhaps he was more comfortable with the thought of it now. She fervently hoped so, anyway, for reasons of her own.

She turned the page, and laughed loudly at the next entry.

_8 th October 1894_

_I have had yet another dream in which Narvin (clean-shaven) is striding with purpose down what are quite probably the ugliest corridors in existence. The people of this planet really do have a truly woeful taste in interior design, even worse than their appalling dress sense. I find the peculiar, brightly coloured chairs, made of a strange, hard substance that is neither metal nor wood, to be particularly deplorable._

As this was something she had thought about on more than one occasion, Lily could not have agreed more.

“Is something funny?”

She glanced up to see Neville, who seemed somewhat tidier than he had been earlier, carefully making his way down the stairs. He looked more than a little nervous, and it was not hard to see why: he was carrying a very heavy looking teapot in one hand, and two cups and a milk jug in the other. She noted he seemed to be trying his best to look calm and collected, but given the whole, rather precariously balanced situation, he was not succeeding.

“Only your scorn at Narvin’s people’s hideous lack of taste,” she said, hastily clearing some space on the desk.

“Ah,” he said, hurrying the last few steps across the room, a few drops of milk sloshing from the jug. Wincing, he set the teapot down with a clunk, followed by the milk jug.

“I don’t have a tea tray,” he explained, setting the cups down and producing two saucers from his pocket, slotting them carefully under the cups. “Tea?”

“Well, since you have gone to so much effort, it would be rude of me to refuse.”

He raised an amused eyebrow, and poured the tea. “So you’ve made a start on reading my notebooks, then?”

She nodded, suddenly hit by a flash of uncertainty. “Yes… I hope that is alright with you? I should have asked. Dreams are such personal things, I do not wish to intrude.”

He sat down, frowning. “Perhaps. But I think we seem to be the exception to that. And besides, I did know that in comparing our dreams, I would have to prepare myself for you actually reading mine. Although I did think I’d be in the room at the time.” He raised an eyebrow pointedly. “But then, I suppose I should have expected you to be curious.”

“I am sorry.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t be. After all, we _are_ supposed to be sharing. What do you think of it so far?” He nodded towards the notebook.

“I have only flicked through, but some things you have written of are definitely things I have dreamed. Others are unfamiliar to me.”

“Hmm.” He started shuffling the disordered papers and notebooks strewn across the desk, stacking them in neat piles around the edge of the desk, so they had a clear workspace in the centre.

She drew her tea towards her, the monumental size of the task before them slowly starting to sink in. Even with the level of detail Neville seemed to have gone into, working anything coherent out from the frequently baffling and incomprehensible parade of images that filled her sleeping hours seemed nigh-on impossible.

She let out a snarl of frustration.

He paused in the act of raising his cup to his mouth. “Lily? Is there a problem?”

“You have so many notes! Between us we have had so many dreams; it is so hard to know where to start!”

“Hmm.” He sipped his tea. “How about we start with filling in the most pressing gaps, the things we don’t understand, the missing things that confuse or bother us the most?”

She considered this carefully. “Yes. That does seem as good a place as any.”

He nodded, and opened a fresh notebook. “I bought this specially,” he said, “So. Is there anything that bothers you or confuses you about these dreams?” 

She snorted. “Would you like a list?”

He smiled wryly. “Fair point. Pick one, perhaps?”

She thought carefully for several long moments. Given the dreams made very little sense at the best of times, it was very hard to narrow it down. And then, she remembered. Dreams of the sounds of warfare, framed by complete darkness.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “there is something. In many of the dreams, I cannot picture anything, only the sound of fighting, or voices, and noises of footsteps, or other strange sounds, but I do not understand why.”

He looked at her, his forehead creasing with worry. “I do,” he said quietly. He selected a notebook and rifled through it until he found the right page. “Here.”

She took it from him and began to read:

_13 th September 1896_

_Narvin was required to set explosive devices in a type of public meeting place (which had many tall supporting columns, and seating areas, and was abandoned by all) for reasons unknown to me, and was accompanied by Leela. It appears that this was not the first time they were required to do this, but I am uncertain why they needed – or wanted – to do such a thing. They appeared to tolerate each other, barely, but still they managed to work together, and possibly felt concern for each other – but well hidden concern, if so. There was an accident; one device went off too soon. Narvin was injured seriously, but recovered; it appears Leela saved his life, but was blinded. She helped him reach safety, though she could not see the way._

A note in the margins read:

_*Possibly related to Civil War? If so, this would explain why they were trying to destroy the architecture of their own city._

She closed the notebook and put it down. “She lost her sight,” she whispered, quietly horrified. Leela was a warrior, after all; Lily would have thought her sight would have been essential. “That must mean that all the dreams I have in which I can picture images must happen before that, then.”

He shook his head. “Not necessarily. She regained her sight again, eventually.” He passed her another notebook.

She read the proffered page, and snorted. “ _Vampires_? She drank the blood of a _vampire_? And could somehow see again? Oh, this is ridiculous!”

“I didn’t say it made any sense,” he said, amused, “but this has proved, if nothing else, that we can help each other fill in the gaps.”

She nodded, and smiled. “Yes, it seems we can.”

He frowned. “That said, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll be able to order them easily. Perhaps this _isn’t_ the best place to start.” He drank some more of his tea; Lily realised she had almost completely forgotten about hers and did the same.

“Hmm,” he said, “I did find us some large sheets of paper so we would be able to write up some sort of timeline…”

“Really?”

“Er…yes.”

“You are very organised,” she said conversationally, wholly unsurprised by this.

“I try to be. But that really doesn’t mean I know what to do next. You were right. It _is_ hard to know where to start.”

“Of course I am right.”

“Hmm.”

She tapped a finger against the desk as she thought. “Your timeline is a good idea, but we might get things wrong, at first. Perhaps if we write each dream onto a separate piece of paper, and then compared them to each other and work out if they happened before or after each other. And then write it up properly when we have them in order. _If_ we ever have them in order.”

He looked at her, blinking slowly, a hint of a smile playing about his lips. “Yes, that might just work. And that allows room for any dreams we are yet to have, too. I have some unused index cards, we can use them. Hmm. I’ll have to devise a method of cross-referencing each dream against one another, probably, and against each notebook too. I take it you bought your notes with you?”

She nodded. “Yes, though they are a lot less detailed than any of yours.”

He shook his head dismissively. “That shouldn’t matter. Just as long as you make a habit of recording them in more detail from now on.”

“I shall,” she said, as he stood up and crossed the room in search of index cards. There was a faint gleam of enthusiasm in his eyes, an air of purpose and intent, something she was certain he would be able to see in her too. It felt good to be able to even _talk_ about the dreams, let alone investigate them.

And to be working on understanding them, side by side with Neville? That was even better, a welcome excuse to spend even more time in his company than she already did.

He returned, and placed a wooden drawer labelled ‘ _Index cards – Unused_ ’ on top of the desk. He sat down, and removed the label from the front, and wrote on the reverse side of it. When he replaced it, it read, in his neatly flowing, careful script, ‘ _Dreams_ ’.

He nodded to himself with satisfaction. “Yes, that will do nicely. But do we compare them as we write them out, or do we write everything out first?”

She considered his question carefully, her head tilted to one side. “Both. We write them all out, and make notes of any patterns and connections we notice as we go.”

Neville nodded enthusiastically. “And I can cross-reference everything. Yes.” His mouth twitched at the corner into a sliver of a half-smile. “You know Lily, I think this might actually work.”

She snorted softly. “Well, I should hope so, since we are putting all of this effort into it. If you pass me some cards, I can make a start on this notebook, whilst you start another, yes?”

He nodded again, frowning, the glimmer shifting from purposeful to mildly frantic as he spoke. “Hmm. Yes. That seems the most efficient way of doing things. We’ll have to be sure to note which of us dreamed each one, or whether it was both of us. You’ll note I have each book numbered? It’s probably best to mention that, and the date it was dreamed. Oh _no,_ I just realised: I should really have numbered each individual dream too and–”

He faltered, because she had taken his hands in hers. “Neville,” she said soothingly, “You are nervous, for this may or may not help us to discover the truth about why we both have these dreams. I understand. I am nervous too. I want answers… but I know we may never find them. Or if we do find them, they may not be to our liking. But whatever the outcome, will it really matter if we have recorded when we dreamed them, or which notebook you recorded them in?”

He gazed at her, his expression as if he was frozen somewhere between retreating into himself, and snapping at her with an angry retort, but he deflated, giving her a weary, weak, and apologetic smile.

“It… probably doesn’t matter, not really. And… you’re right. I _am_ nervous. What if the truth is something we might wish we had never discovered? What if it changes us into something we’re not?”

She tightened her grip on his hands. “Then we will deal with it, together. But I think that what you suggest is highly unlikely. For all that they are strange, unusual, and shared between us, they are just dreams, are they not? They are quite impossible, and nothing about them makes the slightest bit of sense, but they are not real.”

He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, but then he nodded, squeezing her hands gratefully. “Yes. You’re right. I’m just… being silly.”

She shook her head. “ _No_. No, Neville, I do not think you are. The dreams may not be real, but your… _our_ fears are. It is only natural for us to be scared or uncertain of what we may or may not discover.”

She squeezed his hands once more, and then let go, turning to face the desk. “Of course, we shall discover nothing if we sit here worrying about it. We shall start writing them on the cards, and then… we shall see where we go from there.”

She reached for a pen, but faltered as his hand brushed against hers, and her heart stuttered in surprise.

“Lily?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

She smiled. “It was no problem… and it never will be.”

*

Several hours passed, and after a great deal of note-taking, discussions, tea drinking, and multiple mildly heated debates, they stopped working, to Lily’s great relief, to give their heads a chance to rest, and to share a fourth pot of tea and a plate of Mr Collins’s currant buns between them. Lily thought she was probably supposed to feel at least vaguely guilty about consuming her employer’s rival’s produce, but she could not quite manage it. Mr Collins’s currant buns tasted significantly nicer than Mr Thomas’s did.

Lily stretched and rose to her feet, and began to pace the room, still holding her teacup.

Neville looked up from the index card he was reading, and watched her closely. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes. I just needed to move. Being seated for so long was making me fidgety.”

“Ah. Yes, I thought that might be the case.”

“Is that why you suggested we take a break?”

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, and his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Perhaps. What do you think of the buns?”

“I expect I am a traitor for saying this, but I think Mr Thomas ought to start taking notes.”

He snorted in amusement. “I thought you might say that. I’m glad you like them.”

Lily drained her cup, and returned to the desk to pour herself another. She flopped back into her seat with a weary sigh. “Ugh. I am exhausted.”

He nodded and put the index card down, yawning. “I know the feeling. It feels as though we aren’t making any progress, which doesn’t help matters much.”

“Oh, I do not know about that,” she said, “it will take a long time to write everything out – between the two of us we have dreamed a great many things. And besides, we have already made a breakthrough, have we not?”

Neville raised his eyebrows. “Knowing approximately when Narvin grew his beard is hardly a breakthrough.”

“Oh, but it is! We have worked out that he grew it around the time he and Leela became, um…” she faltered and felt her face warm, but forced herself to plough on regardless, “…became lovers, and that means we can start to work out the story of their relationship more! _And_ it means we can use it as a benchmark – if he has a beard than the dream is later in the dreams’ story, and if he does not, it is earlier!”

“Hmm.” He looked thoughtful. “When you put it like that… actually, that could be useful. No, that _is_ useful. I apologise most sincerely for doubting you.”

She shrugged. “There is no need. A little debate can be very enlightening.”

A flicker of amusement glimmered in his eyes. “It does seem so. I wonder…” His expression turned vacant, as though the cogs in the clockwork of his mind were falling into place with the precision of any of his timepieces.

She gave him a while to gather his thoughts, and sat quietly, studying him closely. He had not actually seemed too embarrassed by the mentions of their counterparts being lovers. A little faint blush, perhaps, and a hint of avoiding eye-contact; he had been mildly flustered, but not obviously embarrassed. She herself had acted in much the same way.

Her stomach tightened at that last thought. They had acted in the same way at the mention of their imaginary counterparts being lovers. Given how she was beginning to feel for him… well. She was not certain of what it meant, but the realisation had stirred hope within her heart and left her feeling faintly lightheaded.

“Hmm,” he said, “What we really need is a few more obvious benchmarks, things that we can use as markers to compare each dream to. Things like the political situation, if it’s mentioned, or whether or not there are mentions of wars, perhaps. That way we won’t end up with everything sorted into two clumps of either before he had a beard or after he grew it.”

He picked up his notebook and pen and started frantically scribbling something. “I’m listing some of the potential benchmarks we could use,” he explained, without her even having to ask.

“Ah, I see.”

He kept writing, with alarmingly increasing enthusiasm. Sensing she had temporarily lost him to whatever thread of thought he was pursuing, she reached for another index card, but that moment, he paused in the middle of making a note, as if struck by a sudden thought, put his pen down, and cleared his throat.

“I had almost completely forgotten,” he said, “This isn’t in the slightest bit related to anything we’ve discussed today, but… do you recall me mentioning that rather superstitious cellist whose pocket-watch I mended a few weeks ago?”

She nodded, bemused by the sudden change of subject.

“Well, he was exceedingly grateful, and so he…ah, he gave me two tickets, free of charge, to one of the performances, and… well… um… I was wondering whether…um… you would be interested in attending it with me?”

Lily stared at him in slow, dawning delight. He was avoiding her gaze, staring at his hands in mild, polite interest, as if his fingertips were about to make an important announcement, but his eyes kept flickering towards her and then hastily away again.

She knew she had to say something, and soon, or else, knowing him, he would probably start worrying that he had offended her in some way, but she found she could not speak; she had been left temporarily wordless. No-one had ever asked her to go _anywhere_ with them before.

She found her stomach was suddenly all of a flutter, as was, it seemed, her heart. He had a spare ticket to a performance, and he wanted _her_ to go with him. Admittedly, his social circle was _extremely_ small, to the point of being non-existent, but that was not the point. He had asked _her,_ and apparently the mere thought of that was enough to send her completely off-kilter.

Realising that his frown was deepening with worry, she forced herself to find her voice again. “I should be delighted to go with you,” she said, “though I know very little about musical performances.”

The tension in his posture evaporated and he visibly relaxed, the relief of her acceptance practically radiating off of him, and his frown was erased by a pleased, bashful smile.

“That’s quite alright – I haven’t the faintest idea of what it actually is that’s being performed. This isn’t something I know much about at all, actually, but it does seem a shame to let the tickets go to waste.”

She nodded. “I agree. I have never been to a performance of any kind before, you know. I am looking forwards to this one already, especially as I know I shall be attending in good company.”

That pleased, bashful smile he was wearing broadened. “Likewise.” He cleared his throat again, and started telling her when and where the performance was, before suggesting possible travel arrangements. “It’s best to have it all sorted now, rather than later,” he said.

As he talked, frequently stopping worriedly to check whether the suggested arrangements were agreeable to her, she found herself thinking about the way he had smiled, and the way it seemed to have settled deep and warm within her chest. Though she loved his frown, that rare smile of his was a joy to see. The knowledge that she saw him smile more and more frequently of late, and that he was smiling because of _her_ made her breath catch in her throat, made that deep, warm feeling spread from her chest to the rest of her body with the golden glow of a sunrise.

He had been so lonely, when they met, and if she was truly honest with herself, she had been lonely too. But now, this was no longer true, of either of them. Now, they had, quite unexpectedly, found each other. They were no longer alone.

“Right,” he concluded, “now that’s arranged, shall we return to our work?”

She nodded distractedly, and he shuffled several already perfectly neat and tidy papers purposefully, before returning to his notebook, his face serious with concentration as he reread the last half-written sentence, trying to reach back to whatever it was he had been thinking as he wrote it.

The purposeful paper shuffling and the look of intense concentration on his face were both so _Neville-like_ that Lily’s whole being, already warmed by the mere presence of his smile, softened with simple joy at his existence. As she watched him, smiling fondly, his frown of concentration deepened, and he flicked through his notebook determinedly. He stopped at one entry and skimmed through it, the end of his pen drifting under the line of the words. He frowned even more. Her joy at seeing his smile aside, she had always found his frown oddly endearing, and she was always impressed when, just when she thought it was physically impossible for him to frown any more, he managed to do just that.

Slowly, quietly, Lily reached her hand out, and gently brushed it against his. He looked up at her, startled, and raised an eyebrow quizzically.

Lily leaned forwards and pressed a soft, gentle kiss to his lips. It was the slightest whisper of touch, and yet all she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears, and her heart pounding in her chest. At her touch, he froze, with a sharp, surprised intake of breath, and so after a moment, Lily pulled away and met his gaze. His face was flushed, and his eyes were wide with shock.

Within moments though, the shock faded away, until he was gazing at her, starry-eyed, awestruck and uncertain, his eyebrows slowly lowering as they recovered from the surprise and settled back into a frown.

“Lily,” he squeaked quietly, “did you… did you do that because of Leela and Narvin?”

“No,” she said, not daring to speak any louder than he, “I did that because of _Lily and Neville_ , because of the people we are here, and now, when we are not dreaming; I did it for the people we know ourselves to be.”

The frown lifted, and he let out the tiniest of gasps, the slightest of breaths, still staring at her with that same awestruck expression, his lips parted as if to speak, but he stayed silent. Instead, he raised a trembling hand to her face, his fingers brushing her cheek so carefully she could not be certain whether they were truly touching her skin, or hovering a hair’s breadth away, and now she was trembling too. His thumb slipped under her chin, and delicately traced the line of her jaw, and her breath hitched, and the pressure of his hand increased until it was more solid, more real, and he tilted her head towards his, and he kissed her.

She raised her hand to his cheek, and kissed him back. The kiss was gentle, simple, undemanding, and soft, both of them carefully exploring the feel of the other’s lips, both trembling so much that they could scarcely breathe.

Several long, golden moments later, they broke apart, their hands still on each other’s faces, and Neville let out a shaky laugh. That same starry-eyed awestruck look he had had earlier was still present, but it was heightened by joy.

“Dear, sweet Lily,” he said softly, and she smiled, and traced a finger along his jaw.

“I am certain I have heard that one somewhere before.”

“Perhaps you have,” he said, grinning foolishly at her, “in your dreams.”

She snorted and pulled away. “Perhaps. Speaking of dreams…” She gestured at the index cards neatly stacked before them, “We seem to have got somewhat distracted. There is still much work to be done.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Distracted? And whose fault would that be, exactly?”

“I think that it can be shared equally between us.”

He smiled wryly. “That’s fair,” he said, and awkwardly darted forwards to give her a quick kiss on the tip of her nose, before settling back in his seat and studying his notes intently, as if he had not done anything. The fact that he had acted at all was only given away by the fact he was blushing faintly, and the corners of his mouth kept twitching upwards, shattering the illusion of his frown.

And so they returned to the complicated task of writing, comparing and attempting to order their dreams, continuing on in much the same way as they had been before. Except now, they sat much closer to each other, their arms and hands brushing together, and every now and then they caught each other’s eye, and smiled, uncontrollably.


	8. What began a drizzle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A large section of this chapter (and the chapter title) was somewhat inspired by the song 'Geronimo' by The Divine Comedy, as songs that tell stories are Good

_They were in his office, and they were arguing. Again. Not an entirely unusual state of affairs, given that Leela could get under his skin like no-one else._

_He wasn’t even sure what they were arguing about any more. It had been about something important, he was certain, but now it had descended into a shouting match, and they were yelling at each other, furious, going round and round in circles, trading the same old insults, the same barbed words they’d thrown at each other time and time again._

_Leela was shaking, her face flushed with rage, as she glowered at him, her glorious hair bristling around her head like some sort of fiery halo, and suddenly he’d lost track of what he was saying, was trading insults on autopilot, because all he could see was her, and the way her presence filled the room in a way that was terrifying and yet something else entirely._

_And then she snarled in frustration, and they were stumbling backwards, and his back was against the wall, and she was kissing him, and the whole universe faded to become Leela, and the unrelenting pressure of her lips against his, and the feel of her warm body pressed up against him, and the smell of her, the wildness and the humanity of it._

_He was overwhelmed, overpowered, his system flooded with the feelings he had been denying for so long, and his lips parted willingly before he could prevent it, and she deepened the kiss, and he let her, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her back, desperate and hungry for more, equal parts terrified and awestruck by the wonderful, impossible, sheer force of nature that had him pinned to the wall and trembling in fear and joy alike._

Neville sat bolt upright in his chair, and looked around wildly, his right side smarting painfully.

It took him several seconds of groggy confusion to realise that he was in the theatre, watching the superstitious cellist and the rest of his orchestra perform, and that he had apparently fallen asleep in public, and that his side hurt because Lily had given him a sharp jab in the ribs with her elbow in order to wake him up.

She raised an eyebrow and grinned at him, amused. He smiled weakly at her, and sheepishly sat back in his seat, studiously ignoring the barrage of thoroughly disapproving looks the old man sitting to his left was giving him. 

To have fallen asleep in public, after having invited Lily to accompany him to the performance, was more than mildly mortifying, but he supposed it could have been a lot worse. Mercifully, Lily did not seem at all offended by his impromptu nap. Oh, he would never hear the end of it, of course; she would no doubt be gently teasing him about it until the end of all eternity, but at least he was still in her good books.

His mind, unsurprisingly, wandered back to his dream. He’d been having a lot of dreams like that, lately, although this one was somewhat tame by comparison to some. They would start with an argument, or a raised eyebrow, or one of Leela’s sly smiles, and would end with them both in a heap on the floor, sweaty, dishevelled, and sated.

Most improper, of course, but then, they _did_ live on another planet. Who knew how the acceptable standards of social propriety varied across the stars?

Admittedly, he couldn’t judge them _too_ much. He and Lily had been doing an awful lot of kissing lately, in stolen moments between ordering their dreams, and in one particularly daring moment, in a secluded, tree-covered corner of a park – something he now counted as the most heart-stopping moment of his uneventful life.

His gaze slid away from the orchestra he wasn’t truly paying attention to and fell upon her instead. She was sitting upright and alert, her eyes wide and trained on the stage, her mouth slightly parted, her expression soft as she listened intently to the swell of the music.

He was not well-trained or knowledgeable about music of any kind, not in the slightest, but somehow he knew that he didn’t need to be at all well-versed in music theory to know that the piece was beautiful. As he watched Lily, he listened, and heard the beauty in the way the notes seemed to rise and fall like tides on the river, in the way the louder sections were followed by quieter moments that seemed fragile, almost, and tender, delicate and hesitant, and somehow raw with emotion, before becoming bolder again, and more passionate, soaring breathlessly with the full force of the whole orchestra.

Or perhaps it did not sound that way at all. Perhaps all that he could hear were simply coded markings on a page, performed with precision by those well-practiced in their creation, and the emotions he heard in the sounds they made were his own feelings for Lily, projected at the music by his own foolish heart in a feeble effort to make sense of the strength of his regard for her.

Whatever it was that he heard, there was no doubt at all that the music was beautiful. And as he listened, with his gaze still lingering upon Lily, as he studied her features yet again to ensure that he would never forget her fine eyes, and the way they so often sparkled with delight, or her cheekbones and the faint blush upon them, and the smattering of freckles that hid there too, or the way she was smiling in faint awe at the music, or the way she pinned her hair into curls, and the way it shone with that glorious colour it had, the strands caught somewhere between red and brown in a way that seemed wholly indefinable; as he committed her to memory once more, he knew that her beauty, in heart and mind, and in body and soul, far surpassed anything the music could offer him.

Her gaze flickered briefly from the stage, and she smiled broadly, and he knew she’d sensed his gaze. He made to turn away, but stopped at the warm feeling of her hand brushing against his. His breath caught in his throat, and he furtively glanced around. No-one was paying them the slightest jot of attention. Why would they? They were all here for the music.

He turned his hand so his palm faced upwards, and she covered it with her own, and let it rest there, their fingers entwined. Her hand was warm, and soft, and his pulse quickened at the contact; he swallowed, and held on tighter. She smiled more broadly, and stroked the back of his hand with her thumb.

He stared down at their joined hands and shivered. The effect she had on him was quite frankly perturbing. Everything in the world seemed to glow when she was around, as if she had warmed everything with her presence, with her existence, even. She brightened the world in a way nothing else, not even that warm feeling of satisfaction at hearing a clock tick perfectly for the first time, with all its cogs and gears turning with careful precision, could ever match up to.

Sometimes, it felt as though she had cast her glow upon him, too. Talking with her, kissing her, and simply quietly being by her side and enjoying the pleasure of her company made him feel braver, better, more comfortable in himself than he ever remembered. He was still bewildered by her attentions, of course, but he was finding it easier to accept them, to trust in them, as she accepted his, and accepted _him_ , for who he was, nothing more, and nothing less.

She still managed to affect him when he was left alone, too. When they parted, the warm glow at having been sharing time with her faded into an ache of longing, and sorrow at having to part for even a day or two until they next met. She was constantly in his mind, he felt alight with the glow she cast upon him at the mere thought of her – which, whilst a pleasant feeling, was somewhat distracting, and was proving distinctly detrimental to his productivity.

Their newly discovered past-time of passionately kissing one another, as delightfully pleasant as it was, was also proving something of a distraction, for multiple reasons, one being that his thoughts kept trying to veer rapidly towards the distinctly improper. He kept them under control as best he could, of course – why, it was impolite to have such thoughts about another human being, surely? Especially when the human being in question was as kind, caring, and as wonderful as Lily.

And what then, if things did eventually lead in that direction? What if they somehow ended up married, even? He doubted that would happen, given how appalled at the thought she had seemed, that day in the bakery, but it was nevertheless a possibility. He was certain that he would only serve as a disappointment to her. It wasn’t as if he had any previous experience in matters of the heart, or of marriage. He couldn’t bear the thought of letting her down, in any way, in any situation. He wanted, more than anything, for her to have the happiness she deserved. She deserved far more than him, and yet she seemed to want him around, and even though it was true that he was starting to gladly accept the fact she genuinely enjoyed his company, he still didn’t quite understand it.

The music seemed to fall to a hush, becoming sweet, and soft, and sad, tugging at his heart in a way only Lily had managed, before now; it left a lump in his throat. He would give her the world if he could, he realised, but of course he couldn’t do that. He had only a shop full of time, and himself, to give her. Neville knew that he would gladly give her all of his time, and everything he had, if she let him.

He raised his eyes from their hands and regarded her face once more. She was smiling wistfully towards the orchestra, a hint of a tear in the corner of her eye. It seemed the music was affecting her as much as it was him. That was a relief, in a way. It was good to know that he was not alone.

And if there was one thing that knowing Lily Hunter had taught him, it was that he never wanted to be alone again.

* * *

She had never heard anything quite like it, Lily decided, as the final notes sounded, as the orchestra bowed, and as the audience broke into tumultuous applause. The music had taken hold of her soul, stirring her spirit and emotions, almost as much as feeling the intensity of Neville’s gaze and holding his hand unobserved had.

As they rose from their seats and made their way to the exit, she slipped her arm around his. He raised his eyebrow at her, blushing faintly, and gave her a slight half-smile.

Lily glanced around the theatre. Though she had greatly enjoyed the performance, being in the building was vaguely unsettling. It was strangely familiar, as though she had been there before. She knew she had not, as she had never been to _any_ concert hall or theatre before, let alone the New Regency, and yet there was something about it that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

Neville gave her a reassuring smile, as if he had sensed her discomfort, and she tightened her hold on his arm in response. They made their way to the entrance, their discussion of the performance interwoven with her gently teasing him about having slept through a large chunk of it.

“You should find your cellist friend and congratulate him,” Lily suggested.

He shook his head. “Firstly, he’s not my friend, merely a grateful customer. Secondly, I’ll send him a note of thanks tomorrow. No sense in hanging around outside the stage door when all the poor man wants to do is to go home, he’s probably exhausted.”

They continued their discussion of the performance, but as they reached the doorway of the theatre, they faltered, and exchanged a look of utter dismay.

To say it was raining was an understatement. It had been a pleasant enough day, perhaps a little overcast by the evening, but nothing that suggested an imminent downpour of torrential rain, which was now falling with great enthusiasm. Huge puddles were already forming in the street, and passers-by were hurrying with their heads bowed, all wearing faces ranging from mild dismay, to disgust, through to abject misery. Lily could not blame them. They were going to be soaked through, even whilst hailing a cab.

Neville seemed to be checking his pockets, frowning. His movements became more frantic, and he paled, aghast. He met her questioning gaze apologetically. “I am so sorry, but I seem to have fallen victim to a pickpocket, one that was clearly intelligent enough to ignore my pocket-watch as the useless, broken thing it is, and to seemingly find my money in an instant. I really, really don’t want to ask, but…” He realised she was already rifling through her bag, and trailed off, embarrassed. She politely pretended not to notice.

She rummaged through the depths of her small, worn bag; she found spare hat pins, hair pins, something sticky that might once have been crumbs of currant bun, a handkerchief… but her purse – not to mention its contents – was nowhere to be seen. She scowled. “I did. But now I do not. Somewhere there is a very happy pickpocket, laughing at our unobservant stupidity.”

“Ah.”

They stared at each other with trepidation, then turned to stare at the downpour, huddled together, glumly watching the endless torrent in the vain hope that it might wear itself out and die down. They had no such luck, of course. If anything, the downpour seemed to be getting even stronger.

He sighed. “We’re going to have to run for it, aren’t we?” 

She nodded mutely. The chill the rain brought with it was already getting to her, and she shivered, silently cursing herself for not having thought to bring any form of coat. 

“Here.” 

She glanced at him to find that he had removed his suit jacket and was offering it to her. “It’s not much, but it might keep you marginally drier than the alternative.”

She stared at him, eyes wide, partially because she was deeply touched by the gesture and his thoughtfulness, and partially because she couldn’t help noticing how unexpectedly dashing he looked in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves.

“You will be soaked!” she said reproachfully, even as she accepted the jacket and put it on. It was too big for her, but it was warm, and it smelled like him, something she found strangely comforting.

He shrugged abashedly. “We’re both going to be soaked through, jacket or no, but I’d be happier if you had at least the slightest chance at remaining dry.”

She blinked at him, her face warm, her chest tight with some unnameable burst of emotion. “Thank you, Neville.” And if she was brutally honest with herself, her face was also warm because she was somewhat alarmed at how distracting the mere absence of his jacket was, but she tried not to dwell on it too much.

He grimaced in the direction of the rain. “Well.”

“Off we go, I suppose.”

They exchanged faces of woe, braced themselves, and ran for it, shrieking at the force of it in an extremely undignified manner. The rain was as icy cold, relentless and as unforgiving as it had promised to be. Within moments Neville’s sleeves were sodden and plastered to his arms, but Lily was unable to admire the effect for her feet were already soaking, as puddle water was seeping through the holes in her boots, and so all she could focus on was the painful iciness of her toes. To add insult to injury, her feeble hat seemed to be disintegrating, some of her carefully pinned curls were working loose and sticking to her face, and chillingly icy droplets were running rivers down the back of her neck, soaking her clothing from the inside out, even as Neville’s jacket faltered against the onslaught and water seeped through it, soaking her from the outside in.

Her drowning toes, her frozen and increasingly purple-looking fingers, and layers of increasingly sodden clothing made their long journey seem endless – or at least it did, until Neville hesitantly put his arm around her waist, and somehow that made it bearable. His arm was a warm, tangible thing that gave her something to focus on that was not how cold she felt, or how unbearably heavy her waterlogged clothing was becoming, and when they finally reached his shop and he released her so he could unlock the door, she felt its absence keenly.

Shivering, she waited as he locked the door behind them, and with squelching footsteps and her skirts dripping puddles in a trail behind her, she followed his lead through the dark workshop to the back room, and up the stairs to the small flat he called home. 

“I hope you are planning on offering me tea,” she said, through teeth which seemed to be doing their very best to chatter.

“Naturally. Just as soon as I get the fire going, or else we’ll both catch our death of cold.”

She followed him down a narrow hallway, past a door to the left, through which she caught a glimpse of a tidy but sparse room containing a neatly made bed, and through a door to the right into an orderly, if somewhat plain, living space. To the left, there was a scattering of chairs circling the worn hearthrug by the fireplace. To the right, there was an immaculately clean range, in what was possibly the tidiest kitchen area Lily had ever seen. Several bookshelves were placed against the walls at random, their contents tidily ordered (and, she suspected, quite probably cross-referenced against each other too, in far more detailed a system than anything found in any library). The window on the back wall was gloomy with the rain outside, the panes rattling every now and then with the force of the wind, and she shivered, suddenly intensely glad to be inside, where she could not get any soggier. 

He lit the gas lamps and set to work on the coal fire, and soon it had roared to life, bringing with it a welcome blast of heat, the flicker of the flames casting strange unearthly shapes in the shadows, distracting her from the misery that raged outside. 

Whilst Neville busied himself boiling water for the tea, Lily gingerly removed the sodden, dripping jacket, and unthinkingly flung it on the floor with disgust. Neville gave her an extremely reproachful look and picked it up, hanging it carefully on the back of a chair and smoothing out the creases before picking the chair up and moving it closer to the fire. He paused, and gave her a pointed look of despair for good measure. 

Lily winced, and shrugged apologetically. He shook his head in a weary, world-worn fashion, but as he turned away, she caught a glimpse of a surprisingly soppy smile, and she was hit by a sudden wave of fondness for him. 

As he bustled around in a serious manner, making tea and clearing up the puddles of water they had trailed behind them, Lily sank down onto the worn, faded hearthrug, letting the warmth of the flames wash over her. She watched Neville closely, studying the way he methodically dried the floor, and the way he methodically measured out the tea leaves, frowning in concentration as ever, and her fondness for him intensified, settling in her chest and burning there, the heat of it spreading through her body in a rush of warmth as strong as the heat from the flames. 

He glanced up, caught sight of the intensity of her gaze, and blushed, spilling the leaves over the table as he lost concentration. She turned away, to spare him any of the humiliation he might be feeling, and took her boots off instead, carefully arranging them by the fire instead of casting them aside. She tugged her soggy stockings off too, and hung them on the chair with the jacket. Even without looking, she could practically _sense_ him nodding in approval at her newly-found tidiness. She sat back and stretched her legs out towards the hearth, wiggling her toes at the fire and leaning her head back. She would have been awash with warmth and contentment, had it not been for the stream of icy droplets that chose that precise moment to slide from her hair and run down the back of her neck. 

“Ugh!” 

Neville knelt down by her side and handed her a cup of tea. “Is there a problem?” 

She took the tea gratefully and grimaced at him. “Thank you. I just had a river run down the back of my neck. I need to dry my hair.” 

“No you don’t.” 

“What?” 

“You drink your tea. I’ll do it.” 

“What?” 

He didn’t respond, simply stood up and crossed the room, disappearing into the hallway. There was a silence, punctuated only by the rain outside, and the faint sound of drawers being opened and closed, until he emerged carrying a large blanket and a towel. 

He settled down behind her and wrapped the blanket snuggly around her shoulders, pausing to press a quick, bashful kiss on her cheek; it made her feel peculiarly fluttery and lightheaded, something that increased as his hands hovered above her head. 

He gingerly removed her hat pin, and placed it on the seat of the clothes-drying chair. The sodden remains of her hat soon joined it.

“You really need a better hat.” 

She laughed darkly. “I know. Are you sure you know what you are doing?”

“No. I haven’t the faintest idea.” 

“Ah.” 

She stayed very still as he carefully removed the first few pins, but as it became clear that he was surprisingly adept at doing so without pulling her hair, she relaxed, and took a sip of tea. His fingers were gentle as he deftly eased each of the pins from her hair, her scalp tingling wherever he touched it. She supposed that his precision made sense, really – he had to be particularly dextrous when handling intricate pieces of clockwork, so removing hair pins without tugging her hair was not going to be a problem. She wrapped her hands more securely around her cup, savouring the warmth that radiated out towards her fingers, and stared into the depths of the tea, absently humming a particularly haunting part of the music from the evening’s performance. 

“Why are there so many pins?” Neville exclaimed, and she nearly dropped her tea in amusement. 

“Because I have a lot of hair, and it requires a great many pins to hold it in place.”

“Hmph.” 

She smiled, and took another sip of tea. The sound of the rain drumming on the window panes, the hushed crackling of the flames, the warmth from the fire and the tea, and the gentle caress of Neville’s fingers as he removed the last of the pins, teased her curls free of one another and began slowly combing his fingers through her hair, all combined to fill her with a wonderful sense of deep contentment that warmed her very bones, and she sighed happily.

Today had been a good day, despite the rain – or perhaps the rain had improved it. Without the rain, she would no doubt be alone in her cold rooms, instead of here, basking in the warmth of the fire, drinking the tea he’d made for her, barefoot, wearing a blanket that smelled of him, whilst he gently patted her hair dry. She could not recall ever having felt so comfortable. It would be a shame to leave. 

She finished the last of her tea, just as he finished drying her hair. He had not made himself any tea, the idiot, or if he had, he had not drunk it. He rested his hands on her shoulders, leaned forwards to kiss her on the cheek again, and then took her cup and cleared it away. Lily turned to watch him, then eyed the window dubiously. 

It was still raining, although ‘raining’ seemed too mild a term for the rage outside the window. Earlier, she had thought that the downpour was the heaviest she had ever seen, but clearly she had been wrong, because somehow it had got even heavier. It seemed to have got windier too; the wind whistled past the chimney tops and down the flue, howling angrily and making the windows rattle. She looked at her toes, warm and pink from the fire. She eyed her holey boots and grimaced. 

“I am not leaving,” she announced, “I am going to stay here.” 

There was a loud shattering noise as Neville dropped a teacup, followed by a peculiar spluttering. She turned to face him. Neville was blushing furiously pink, and was staring at her with wide eyes. 

“Neville?” she frowned, “Are you alright?”

He boggled at her. “Alright? _Alright_?” His voice had gone strangely high-pitched, and his gaze seemed to be darting wildly between her and the hallway. “You just casually suggested… suggested… And you sit there and calmly ask me if I’m _alright_!”

She looked up at him, utterly bewildered by this strange outburst, and stood up, letting the blanket drop to the floor, and padded over to him.

“Neville, I am confused. I did not suggest anything? I simply meant that I shall stay here, if you do not mind, because it is still raining heavily and I have only just started to dry. I do not wish to go out there and get soaked through again.” 

“I… Oh. I see.” He somehow managed to turn an even darker shade of pink than he already had, which was quite an impressive feat. “Sorry. I thought… um… Never mind what I thought.” He shook his head blearily. “You are more than welcome to stay, of course you are.” 

She frowned at him, her head tilted to one side. What on Earth could he possibly have thought she had meant? His eyes still had not stopped darting around the room, between her and the hallway and– oh. It was not the hallway he was looking towards at all, but the room that lay on the other side of it. 

She felt herself growing warm, but not unpleasantly so, and she stared at him. “You thought… you thought that I meant we should… should…” She let her gaze drift slowly and deliberately towards the hallway, or rather, towards his bedroom, linger there for several long seconds, and then slowly wander back to him. He looked utterly mortified. 

“I… Um…” he managed apologetically. 

“I mention the possibility of me staying here, and _that_ is the first conclusion your mind jumps too? You surprise me, Neville.” 

“Lily… M-Miss Hunter… I can only apologise for my presumption, my impropriety, my-” 

“Do not trouble yourself. Though it is true I meant nothing of the sort, I find that, on reflection, I certainly would not protest if I did spend the night in your bed. With you.” 

He gaped at her. “ _Lily!_ ” he hissed in scandalised tones, “are you…trying to _seduce_ me?” 

“ _I_ was not the one who bought the subject up in the first place,” she pouted, quietly delighted at his expression: a mixture of outrage, bewilderment, and heavily repressed desire.

“ _I_ wasn’t the one who suggested you staying!” he said, his voice increasing in pitch, “that was _you_! How was I to know what you meant?”

“Because it is raining!” she shouted, suddenly infuriated at his stubborn idiocy.

“That’s ridiculous!” he yelled, “I can’t read minds!” His voice had gone so high-pitched it had become uncontrollably squeaky; practically all traces of his steady, deep voice had vanished. 

“And I do not expect you to!” she shouted, “but I do not understand how you could so wildly misread my perfectly innocent suggestion, then get offended when I suggest we do what you thought I was suggesting in the first place!” 

She paused to get her breath back, before continuing at the same volume as before, “And I meant it! I _would_ like to spend the night with you!” She glared at him furiously. 

His face scrunched in angry confusion. “ _Really_?” 

“ _Yes_!” Her hands balled into fists with frustration. 

“But… but it would be _improper_!” 

She threw her hands up in the air, infuriated. “I do not care for propriety! It is a waste of time!” 

“Well I care for it!” 

“And I care for _you_! Deeply!” 

“I…” He paused, blinking. “You do?”

“ _YES!_ ” 

He looked taken aback. “Alright, alright! No need to shout about it!” he said, loudly. 

“I am not shouting!” she shouted, “If anyone is shouting, it is _you_!” 

“I only shouted because you started shouting first!” 

“I did not!” 

“You did!” 

“Why are we even arguing about it?” 

“How should I know?” 

They both paused to catch their breath, glaring at each other. They caught each other’s gaze, and the corners of Neville’s mouth twitched. The sheer absurdity of the situation must have struck them both at the same time, because barely half a second later, they had both dissolved into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. 

He staggered forwards, shoulders shaking, and they collapsed against each other, both wheezing uncontrollably. Together, they shuffled backwards and sank to their knees on the hearthrug, still giggling hysterically, Neville spluttering in a feeble, failing attempt to regain his lost dignity, loosely wrapping his arms around her, whilst she buried her face in the crook of his neck, clutching at his waist to anchor her to something more tangible than the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, only surfacing once the laughter had subsided. 

She sat up once she had calmed down, took several deep breaths, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “We are ridiculous.” 

He nodded. “Quite absurd.”

“We are fools.”

“Imbeciles.”

“Idiots.”

“Complete and utter morons.” 

She nodded, smiling faintly. “I could not agree more. What… what just happened?” 

He shrugged. “I really haven’t the faintest idea.” 

She cleared her throat and attempted to look serious. “Perhaps we were possessed by the spirits of Leela and Narvin,” she intoned solemnly, her mouth twitching.

He rolled his eyes, fighting a grin. “That’s preposterous.”

“Oh, I quite agree.”

He shook his head blearily, and they gazed at each other in comfortable silence for a few moments, enjoying the heat of the flames, their moment of shared hysteria fading away. They were sitting very close together; neither of them had moved from where they had sunk down to the floor, and they rested comfortably against one another. Neither of them made an effort to move, and so there they stayed, each with a hand still resting on the other’s waist. The fire cast a warm glow upon them, the flickering orange light illuminating his face and glinting in his eyes, deepening the blue. 

Lily let her eyes roam over his features, more familiar to her now than they had ever been before. She longed to clear away the worries and fears that had etched themselves into the lines of his face, to erase them from his mind completely. He had been surprised and confused when she told him she cared for him, even now they spent the vast majority of their free time in each other’s company, even now that kissing one another had become a normal activity for them, and knowing that even a small part of him still remained uncertain of her affections for him broke her heart. She wanted him to be happy, comfortable, unworried and unafraid, and in no doubt as to the depth of her feelings for him. 

She shifted her hand from his waist to his arm, and his eyebrows knotted together with uncertainty. 

“Neville?” 

“Yes, Lily?” 

“If you do not wish for us to become lovers tonight, or if you never wish for us to do so, I understand, and I will not force the matter. I am content enough to simply be able to enjoy your company, in any way I can. I meant it, you know, when I said I care for you. I meant it from the bottom of my heart. I do care for you, far, far more than I can possibly say. ” 

He gazed at her, his eyes soft and starry with raw emotion, his lips slightly parted, and for the slightest of seconds, she glimpsed the deep yearning she felt for him mirrored within his gaze, and the burning warmth that had spread slowly through her over the course of the evening, settling deep within her, seemed to tighten in response. 

He swallowed. “Thank you,” he said quietly, “for being so considerate. It… it means a great deal to me.” 

She nodded, once. He had more to say, she was certain. She could see it in the way his forehead was creased just so, in the way he seemed poised to take a breath, in the way his eyebrows had drawn close together as he formulated his next words. She waited patiently, undemanding, not wanting to hurry him. When he was ready to speak, he would.

Eventually, he pursed his lips together, and drew in a deep breath. “Lily… I’m deeply touched by your regard for me, and… and I do care for you too, more than anything, more than I can put to words. Certainly far more than I do for propriety; please… please don’t think otherwise. I’m… I’m not sure that I could forgive myself if I’ve led you to believe that I care for the… the… the expectations of appropriate behaviour set by people who neither know of us nor care for us more than I do for you. You are _far_ more important than anything they have to say. It’s just… I’ve lived my life conforming to what I believe is expected of me, and breaking from that habit is… somewhat difficult.” 

She nodded. “I understand.”

“And another thing…” He swallowed. “I… I’ve never… never…” he waved a hand in a vague but meaningful manner, “…before.” 

She exhaled slowly, overwhelmed with a fierce rush of overwhelming fondness and concern for him. _Oh Neville_.

“Neither have I,” she said softly, “but in certain dreams… well. Let us just say that I have learned a thing or two from our imaginary counterparts.” 

His eyebrows flitted upwards in badly disguised surprise. “I could… probably say the same. Some of those dreams have been most… illuminating.” 

She smiled. “Yes. That is one way of putting it. But even without the dreams, I think we would be alright.” 

“You think so?” 

She nodded. “I am certain. We both care for each other a great deal, and we trust each other. I am sure we will be able to find our own way, together.” She squeezed his arm reassuringly, and let go. 

He frowned, and looked away, and stared contemplatively into the flames, tapping the ends of his fingers together as he thought. She waited patiently for him to assess the situation in the detailed ways he required, for the cogs to turn in the clockwork of his mind. She longed to reach out, to hold his hand, but she resisted, not wanting to risk throwing him off balance, and so she waited, as patiently as she could manage, a lump in her throat, her care for him – no, her _love_ for him, for she could at least have the decency to be honest with herself – burning tightly deep within her chest, her ears prickling at the near-silence of the room, the only sounds the constant noise of the rain at the window, the crackling of the flames in the hearth, and the soft sigh of their breathing. 

A light seemed to be dawning in his eyes, as if the cogs were finally falling into place; he seemed to sit straighter, the tension in his posture fading away. Her heart beat a little faster, and she forced herself to breath evenly, to remain calm.

He swallowed, turned away from the flames and met her eyes. His eyebrows were drawn together in a frown of concentration, of bravery even, and his gaze was steady; most of his earlier uncertainty seemed to have dissipated into the ether. He reached out a hand and traced a finger carefully along her jaw, and another over her lips, and gently tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, his hand coming to rest against her neck. 

“Damn propriety”, he whispered, and he kissed her, with a burning intensity to rival the heat of the flames beside them. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, and he kissed her, and he kissed her, and he kept on kissing her, and the incessant, consuming noise of the rain outside faded away, as if it had never been there at all.


	9. It is our wish...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, there are some vague references to an unspecified past trauma in this chapter, far from being anything at all graphic, but probably worth forewarning you about all the same

Neville awoke abruptly, blinking away hazy images of sharp blades, clutching his arm, the pain of the wound from his dream still lingering. He started to roll over, realised he was precariously close to the edge of the bed, and hastily rolled back again. He lay still for a moment, to let himself recover from the shock of nearly falling out of bed, and realised he was cold; there was a chill draught playing across his skin. He frowned, glanced down, and realised he was covered by considerably less of the blankets than he had been when he went to sleep.

He turned his head sideways, and sighed in fond despair.

Lily was still fast asleep; she lay sprawling, spread-eagled across the bed, buried under what could only be described as more than her fair share of the blankets. Her hair surrounded her head in a wild mess of red-brown waves; he strongly suspected that brushing it out the previous night had been a waste of time, and that it was now spectacularly tangled. 

He tugged the sheet further over him and rolled onto his side, shuffling closer to her, carefully so as not to disturb her. He was still faintly bewildered by the turn of events that had led to her being here, but he certainly was not going to complain about it, even if there was a whispering voice in the very back of his mind tutting disapprovingly about propriety, and even if she’d stolen most of the blanket.

He didn’t mind about that too much, though. He could accept being cold, if it meant that she was warm.

Her nose twitched, and then her hands, and she stretched, her eyes opening groggily. She blinked at the ceiling several times, smiled, and rolled to face him. 

“Good morning,” he murmured, and he took her hand in his. 

“Yes, it is,” she said, smiling sleepily. She tugged his hand, and he moved closer, pulling more of the blanket over himself as he did so.

“Oops,” she said sheepishly, “I hope you were not too cold.”

“I only noticed when I woke up,” he shrugged, leaning his face towards hers. 

She smiled, and drowsily they kissed, slowly, and undemanding, but with feeling. When they drew apart, they brushed the tips of their noses together, and she ran a hand over his cheek, scratching his beard. He traced a finger delicately around the shell of her ear. 

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, fully expecting her to reply in the affirmative, but to his considerable concern she hesitated, a thoughtful crease settling on her brow. 

“I… I had dreams,” she said slowly, her eyes unfocused. 

“Ah.” 

“I… I cannot tell if they were dreams based upon my own life, for once, or if they were still dreams involving Leela… they seemed to be set here, in London, if not now, then in the last ten years or so, I am certain.” 

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? How much do you remember – if you don’t mind me asking?”

She frowned, and was silent for some moments. “I… the images are all disconnected… random threads of many separate dreams which are all related to one another… I can barely make sense of it.”

Her frown of concentration deepened, and his entire being went soft at the sight of it. 

“I remember… I remember…” She paused, biting her lip. “I remember that there were two gentlemen who appeared many times… but I do not remember their names, or their faces. Oh, everything is so unclear! There was a room, with giant hourglasses, and we were trapped inside one, and the sand was pouring fast… I entered a tavern, wearing a grand but somewhat ugly dress, and I was laughed at, and a friend of the two gentlemen said she would lend me her clothes. And there were others too – there were men, or ghosts, perhaps, dripping with water and rising from the Thames… and in another, I was fighting a tiger in a Turkish bathhouse. Oh, it makes no sense!” 

“Hmm. Well, unless you have a secret habit of wrestling large cats that you haven’t told me about yet, I would say those dreams were definitely from Leela’s perspective.” 

“Well, yes, I thought so too… but in another of them, she – or I – was with the two men I cannot properly remember in a theatre – the very same theatre we visited last night.” 

“Oh?” He gently stroked his thumb over her cheekbone, and she closed her eyes, and sighed. 

He frowned. “I… couldn’t help noticing that at times, you seemed… somewhat unsettled by being there, in the New Regency.” 

She opened her eyes, nodding. “I felt as though I had been there before, even though I have not, and until now, I am certain I have never dreamed of it either.” 

“How curious. Somehow Leela doesn’t strike me as a keen theatre-goer.” 

Lily smiled. “No, nor me.” Her smile faded, and she sighed again. “I wish I knew what this all meant. It is all so _confusing_.” 

He snorted softly. “I couldn’t agree more.” 

“Did you have any dreams?” 

“Ah. Yes. I dreamed of three instances of Leela threatening Narvin with a knife. It was somewhat terrifying, to say the least.”

“Oh dear,” she said, amused, “Whatever did he do to make her want to do such a thing?” 

Neville thought about it. “I’m not sure. In the first… he seemed to know more about her husband’s disappearance than he was letting on. In the next… well, I’m not certain of what was happening at all, all I really remember is that he spent a lot of time shouting about her stabbing him not being legal. Hm. He probably had a point. And then in the third of them… as far as I recall, she was not truly threatening him, but was in fact trying to save his life.” 

“By stabbing him?” Lily asked incredulously. 

“Er… it would seem so. There was some sort of impossibly tiny explosive device under his skin, and she cut it out of his arm, and saved his life. I woke up to find that my arm was hurting in the place she had cut Narvin’s – which by coincidence happens to be where I already have a scar.” 

Lily was silent for a moment, and then, biting her lip, she said quietly, with evident concern, “I noticed last night that you… you have _many_ scars, Neville.” 

He nodded. It wasn’t a question; it did not really require a spoken response. She traced a finger along one of the many faint, silvery lines on his chest.

“Many of them seem to match the ones I dream Narvin as having… although you have a few more than he does, I think.” 

He nodded again. Any moment now, she was going to start asking awkward questions – questions that he didn’t really have an answer for. He met her concerned gaze, and gave the slightest of nods, unspoken permission for her speak the inevitable question she was burning to ask but too polite to say. 

She hesitated a few seconds before she spoke. “If… if you do not mind me asking… how did you come by them?” 

He sighed. “I don’t remember.” 

Her eyes widened. “What?” 

“I don’t remember. Well… that’s not entirely true. I do remember something… but it makes very little sense. The sorts of injuries implied by the faint memory I have do not remotely correspond with anything that could cause the wounds I have clearly suffered at some point.” 

“What is it that you remember?” 

“My mind tells me that as a child, I fell from a tree into a sheep field. But I am _certain_ that isn’t what happened, I don’t believe a word of it.”

“That does not at all sound like anything that would happen to you – though I suppose it would explain your hatred of sheep. But I cannot imagine you have _ever_ climbed a tree in your whole life.”

“Precisely. It might sound strange but… I believe that this is a false memory my mind has given me to protect me from the truth – a truth I have now forgotten.” 

She gazed at him, her forehead creased with concern, her lips slightly parted. “You think that… that whatever it was that happened to you… whatever it was that gave you these scars was… was so terrible that your mind has made you forget it?”

He nodded. “I believe so. Though truthfully… I try not to think about it too much. It is largely irrelevant to my daily life and will forever remain a mystery, after all.” 

“Oh _Neville_ ,” she whispered, her eyes glinting with moisture, and she gently kissed his cheek. “You have so few childhood memories. Why, you have even fewer than I! What if… what if you have lost them all because of whatever it is you have forgotten?” 

“Perhaps. But it as I said – I’ll never know the truth.” 

“You might do, one day, just as we might one day find out the truth about our dreams. Perhaps you should see a doctor, or… or a hypnotist, to see if your memories can be uncovered.”

He looked at her in incredulity. “A… a _hypnotist?_ Good grief no! Are you mad? I refuse to waste my time and money on something so pointless; they’re quacks and charlatans, the lot of them!” 

She shrugged. “I was just trying to help, it was only an idea. There is no need to get quite so uppity about it.” 

“Uppity!” 

“Yes. Uppity. Your voice went high-pitched – far more than it usually does, too.” 

He sniffed. “I haven’t the faintest idea of what you are talking about, and I resent all that you are implying. I do not get ‘uppity’.”

“If you say so.” 

He glared at her. She grinned back, and kissed him briefly, and then her smile faded, returning to her frown of worry and concern. 

“I do not wish to make you uncomfortable by discussing this,” she said quietly, “and if I have, I am sorry. I want you to be happy, and if you would be happier never knowing the truth, then I accept that, of course I do. It is just that I do not like the thought of anything bad happening to you, not now, not in the past, and not in the future.” 

He didn’t really know what to say to that, so he kissed her. It was brief, but filled with meaning, the emotions he couldn’t quite put to words. She seemed to understand. 

He ran a hand gently down her side. “You know, in my dreams, Leela has scars too. You, on the other hand, have none.” 

“I know,” she said quietly, “that is why I was so surprised to find you with scars that perfectly match the ones I have dreamed that Narvin has.” 

He frowned. “You were surprised? I didn’t notice that.” 

She smiled slyly. “You did not notice for the same reason I did not ask you about them.” 

“Oh yes?” 

“We were somewhat… distracted.” 

“Hm. Yes. I suppose we were.” He allowed a moment to think back to the previous evening. Amongst the images that came drifting back to him was an old watch on a chain, hidden under layers of rain-drenched clothing. 

“Hmm. Speaking of things noticed last night and left unremarked upon…” he said, trailing a finger along her collarbone. 

“Yes?” 

“I had no idea that you wear that battered old watch I fixed for you as a necklace.” 

She smiled. “I wear it every day.” 

He blinked. “Really?” 

“Yes. You are unaware because it usually hidden under my clothing. You see… I like to wear it close to my skin. Close to my heart.” 

He swallowed, and she smiled, and poked him gently in the ribs. “And you know, I have far more understandable sentimental reasons for wearing it than you do for wearing that broken old pocket-watch every single day for no reason at all.” 

He shrugged. “I suppose I simply got into the habit of wearing it.” 

“You could fix it.” 

“I haven’t the time.” 

“Hmm.”

He frowned, and idly tapped her on the shoulder. “So… what…ah… what exactly are those ‘understandable sentimental reasons’, then?”

“You mean you do not know?” 

“I might know, but I don’t want to make false assumptions. That would only lead to misunderstandings and confusion.” 

She smiled. “Very wise.” 

“I try to be.” 

“Hmm.” She shifted position, and took his head gently in her hands. “My reasons are quite simple, really.” 

“Oh yes?” 

She nodded, and stroked his cheek, gazing at him with smiling eyes. “Yes. I… I love you, Neville.” 

He let out a soft gasp of surprise, suddenly strangely giddy and light-headed. If he hadn’t been lying down, he would have needed to find a steadying chair to collapse upon. He gaped at her wordlessly. Such a simple, uncomplicated sentence, in theory, and yet in practice, it had left him feeling as though his whole being had been drenched in sunlight, and Lily was the sun.

He swallowed back the lump in his throat, and blinked at her, painfully conscious of the fact his eyes seemed to have filled with moisture without his permission. “Oh _Lily_.” 

She gave him a sad smile, her fondness and affection and yes, her love for him, intermingled with her concern. She stroked his cheek again, and he tilted his head so he could plant a soft kiss on her palm. She opened her mouth as if to speak but hesitated, and looked away, her brow furrowed in deep thought. After some moments, she nodded to herself, and met his gaze again, unwaveringly. 

“Actually Neville… since we are on the subject of… of feelings, and such like…” She paused to take a steadying breath, and looked at him earnestly. “I think we should marry.” 

Startled, he drew in a sharp breath. “I… really?” 

“Yes. It is, after all, the proper thing to do.” 

He frowned at her, more memories of the previous night drifting back to him. “I thought you didn’t care for propriety.” 

“I do not. But you do.” 

He blinked. “Ah.” 

“And besides… I think I would like to be able to wake up by your side every day. It is nice.”

He shifted his arm, and ran his fingers through her hair. “I’d like that too.” He hesitated, steeling himself up for the emotional honesty required for the rest of the conversation. “I said, some time ago, that I had very little to be passionate about, except for clockwork…” 

“And something else, which you refused to tell me.” 

“Yes.”

“What was it?” 

“You. It’s _you_. I just… didn’t have the words for it then. I could barely acknowledge it to myself, let alone to you. Even now, it’s still not easy, and that has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with who I am. But you’re right. We should marry. I’d… I’d like that, very much. I… ah…” He swallowed and took a deep breath, feeling his face burn. “I… I love you too.” 

She smiled at him delightedly, more dazzlingly than ever before, her whole face aglow. “That took courage to say. You are brave.” 

He smiled lopsidedly in spite of himself, and she kissed him gently on the end of his nose.

“Now, are you not going to ask me?” 

He frowned at her in confusion. “Ask you? Ask you what?”

“To marry you.” 

“But… I thought we just had that conversation?” 

“Yes, with statements, and suggestions, not questions.”

“Ah.”

“I thought, given your concern for propriety, you would wish to ask me properly.”

He raised an eyebrow, his mind flitting back to the previous night’s activities. ‘It’s a bit late for that now’, he thought wryly, and smiled.

He looked her square in the eyes, took her hand in his, and asked, in the most solemn tones he could muster, “Miss Hunter, would you do me the honour of allowing me to become your husband?”

She grinned. “I should be delighted to, Mr Jones.” 

He nodded. “Hm. Excellent. Well, I’m glad we’ve got that settled.” 

She shuffled closer, and poked him until he rolled onto his back. She draped herself over him and hugged him tightly. 

“So am I,” she whispered, and kissed him gently. 

It was a simple kiss, but nonetheless one that managed to skew his perception of the passage of time. The next few moments became slow, hazy, and golden, until with a final brush of her lips she pulled away, shifting position and resting her head on his chest with a happy sigh. They lay there in warm, quiet contentment, Neville glowing with the sort of happiness he had previously thought to be a mere invention of fiction. 

In the distance, a church bell solemnly chimed the hour, the sound of it drawing him abruptly away from the comfortable world they had created for themselves, and sharply back to reality – or more precisely, back to the reality that involved baker’s assistants generally being required to start work early.

He sighed heavily. “As much as I hate to say it, you should probably go soon; otherwise you’ll be late for work.”

She groaned into his chest and pulled the blankets over her head. “Do I have to?” she said, her voice muffled.

He chuckled, and wrapped his arms around her tighter. “I’m afraid so.”

She groaned again. “It is alright for you, all you have to do to get to work is to simply walk down the stairs.”

He grinned, and lifted the blanket up just enough to kiss her on the top of her head. “I’ll stop by the bakery later, you know. If that’s enough incentive for you?”

“Hmm.” She shifted position, and peeked out from under the blanket. “I suppose I can probably manage to drag myself away from you if I know I shall see you later.” She yawned. “Where are my clothes?” 

“Er…” He thought about it carefully. “I… think they’re by the fire… where we left them. As are mine.” 

“Oh yes.” She groaned again, disappearing into the depths of the blanket once more. “I am very warm, and very comfortable, and I do not want to move.” 

He sighed in the most melodramatic, long-suffering manner he could muster. “I’ll get them. If you can find the energy to move off of me, of course.” 

She made a non-committal huffing noise and shuffled sideways, still wrapped in the blanket, until she was curled in a ball by his side, all of her hidden except for her eyes, which peeked out from amongst the folds of material, wide and intense, their startling blue turned dark in the half-light of the morning.

Neville smiled. The discovery that Lily was somewhat reluctant when it came to mornings was strangely delightful, and he wondered how many more discoveries like it they had yet to make about each other. There would be plenty, he was certain, and he was already looking forwards to all of them. They had their whole lives ahead of them, after all, lives that would be shared together. It was pleasantly terrifying, in a way that made his heart race and his head spin as much as it had upon hearing her declaration of love. It wouldn’t always be easy, he knew, but he was certain it would be worth it. _Lily_ was worth it, was worth every second of his time; he was gladly looking forward to sharing all his time with her.

The future beckoned, signalling an end to the loneliness of the past, and as far as he was concerned, it could not come soon enough.

* * *

Lily unhooked her apron from its peg and wrapped it around her with a sigh of relief. She had made it to work on time, but only just.

Mr Thomas looked up from kneading the latest batch of dough, and eyed her closely. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“You look a little tired, Miss Hunter. Are you quite well?”

“I… oh… Um… yes, I am very well. I went to a performance last night, and did not return home until quite late,” she managed, somewhat lamely. It was not a lie, not really. It was mostly true, anyway. Well, almost.

“Ooh, a performance, eh? Very grand, I’m sure. Did your Mr Jones take you, by any chance?” he inquired, in tones that reeked of badly faked disinterest. 

“He is not my-” Lily began automatically, realised that was a very futile argument, given the circumstances, and sighed. “Yes, he did.”

“Ha! Is he well?”

“Oh… er, yes. He is very well.” She paused, biting her lip. She might as well tell him now, as he would have to know eventually, but all the same, this was not a conversation she was at all looking forwards to. 

She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and met his gaze squarely. “Since we are on the subject... I must inform you that your predictions about me and Mr Jones were correct. It is our wish to be married.” 

Mr Thomas roared with approval. “Congratulations! Didn’t I say I saw it coming?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Well, I’m pleased for you Miss Lily, but all the same, can’t you be persuaded to change your mind? Training up someone new to replace you is going to be a hard job, you’re a good worker.” 

Lily tried very hard not to scowl. “I could stay on, you know, there is nothing stopping me.” 

He crossed his arms. “Now, now, Miss Lily, don’t start getting revolutionary on me. You’ll be a married woman; your duties will be elsewhere. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is.” 

He retreated back to the bread oven, whistling. Once he was gone, Lily snarled with a ferocity of which Leela would have been proud, and began to silently fume. She fumed all morning, slamming down trays of bread with far more force than was strictly required and glowering at Mr Thomas every time his back was turned. 

It certainly did not help matters that whenever he happened to be on the shop floor at the same time as a customer, he took it upon himself to boom her good news at them with great enthusiasm. By coincidence, some of the morning’s customers happened to be the very same trio of labourers who had been present at the time of Neville’s first visit to the bakery. 

Mr Thomas told them her news, and she gritted her teeth, bracing herself, fully expecting the worst, but to her surprise they seemed genuinely enthusiastic and happy for her, and offered her their heartfelt congratulations whilst keeping their melodramatic complaints of broken hearts and their utterance of the words “I told you so” to a minimum. 

After that, her mood lightened a little, and she began to think of ways in which she could continue working _and_ exact revenge upon Mr Thomas at the same time. By midday, she had formulated a plan, and so was no longer simmering with rage. The background irritation was still present, however, gnawing away at her every time Mr Thomas so much as breathed. 

The two, doddery old ladies she had been serving for what felt like an hour left, leaving the shop briefly empty. Only briefly though, because as they left, Neville entered, wearing an uncharacteristically dopey, love-struck grin, and at the sight of him, the background irritation faded to a whimper. The tension left her shoulders, and she heaved a sigh of relief, the simple sight of his face acting as balm to a wound. 

He forced his features into a more serious expression. “Good afternoon,” he said, as though he was trying very hard to remain formal and indifferent but failing spectacularly at it. His feeble attempt at appearing polite but neutral was shattered by the lingering hints of his foolish grin playing about the corners of his mouth and eyes. 

“Good afternoon, Neville,” she said, grinning broadly. 

All pretence at polite indifference failed, and he grinned back, and crossed the shop floor, resting his hands on the counter and glancing quickly around for any signs of life. Seemingly satisfied Mr Thomas was not lurking hidden in any corners, he leaned forwards and gave her a brief but heartfelt kiss. 

He pulled away, faintly pink. “It is good to see you."

She smiled, and slid her fingers across the counter so they rested against his. “And you. It has been so very long since we last met, after all.” 

He smiled lopsidedly. “Oh, it has. It’s been… hours.”

She snorted softly, and his smile broadened, his eyes alight with amusement and affection. 

They gazed at each other for several seconds, but then his forehead creased, and his smile faded. “Are you… alright?” 

“Perfectly. Certainly all the better for seeing you. Why do you ask?” 

“Well, I was waiting outside for the shop to empty, so we could have a few moments alone… and I was watching through the window and, well… you looked a bit cross.” 

She sighed, and glanced around to check Mr Thomas had not materialised. “I was. I am. My employer is a toad.”

“Ah. Would you… care to elaborate?”

She nodded, double-checked for any sign of eavesdroppers, and launched into a quiet but angry rant about the whole sorry situation. He listened intently, his eyebrows raised, nodding periodically. She hoped that meant he was taking her seriously, and was not a sign he was merely humouring her whilst harbouring opinions that matched Mr Thomas’s. She was not sure she could bear being married to someone who thought like that, even if that someone was Neville. 

“…and so according to him I am ‘revolutionary’ for the terrible crime of wanting to continue earning money,” she concluded, scowling. 

Neville nodded slowly. “And he really put it in those exact words?” 

“Yes.” 

“That is somewhat patronising, to say the least.” 

She raised an eyebrow. “I am very glad you think so. I fully intend to keep working even after we marry, you know. I am perfectly aware it is not the done thing, but I like working. For all I complain about certain aspects of the job, I do enjoy it. And if I stopped working, we would have to survive on your earnings alone. And what would I do with myself, if I stopped? Stay at home, cleaning things, like a good obedient wife? Ugh! If you are expecting me to do so, then you are sorely mistaken, and are not the man I thought you were.”

During her outburst, his eyebrows had risen so high up his forehead that they had practically reached his hairline. One corner of his mouth had twitched into a fond half-smile.

“I was expecting nothing of the sort,” he said, meeting her eyes, “especially given how your instinctive response to taking off that sopping wet suit jacket was to fling it in a heap on the floor. There is no way that I am _ever_ letting you be responsible for the cleaning.” 

She burst into relieved laughter. “Oh, I am very, very glad I met you, Neville Jones. And I am delighted to discover that you too, are what Mr Thomas would term a ‘revolutionary’.”

He smiled abashedly, his cheeks tinged faintly pink. “An honour, I’m sure. And I’m considerably pleased I met you too.”

She squeezed his hands, smiling, and he stroked her thumb in response, a slight frown intruding into his expression. 

“I do have one question, though.” 

“Yes?” 

“Whilst I have no issue with it… many others will. How _do_ you plan on continuing working, once we marry?” 

She grinned. “It is quite simple, really. You are aware, of course, of Mr Thomas’s rivalry with Mr Collins?”

He snorted softly. “How could I not be? I have a distinct memory of you getting in the way of them throwing food at each other, and getting covered in pie as a result.” 

She sniffed. “Yes, well, Mr Collins has been attempting to persuade me to ‘switch sides’, as it were, and to work for him, for _years_. He realised that I am _far_ more competent than anyone he has ever had work for him, _and_ he knew that if he got me on his side, it would _infuriate_ Mr Thomas. I am certain they both make business decisions solely based off of what will infuriate the other. So it is simple: I shall go to Mr Collins and tell him that I accept his offer, and that will allow me to continue working, whilst also greatly irritating Mr Thomas at the same time.” 

“An interesting plan, certainly. There’s no guarantee that he would take you on once he’s been made aware that you are to marry, though.” 

“Yes, that is true. But he has asked me so many times, and I think that his hatred of Mr Thomas might outweigh any misgivings he may have about me being married, their rivalry is so strong. And, you know, if all works out well, I believe there is a chance that I may be able to negotiate better pay and perhaps more reasonable hours, too, so I am not required to be there every day – and that would mean I get more time with you.” 

“Oh? What makes you think that?” 

“It is as I said, he has been trying to persuade me for some time now, and he has hinted such things in the past, in his attempts to lure me into working for him. He sometimes seemed quite desperate, he has never had much luck with his assistants – something Mr Thomas is constantly gloating over, using _me_ as a shining example of his superiority.” She grimaced.

“If he’s promised you all these advantages to working for him before, why on Earth haven’t you taken him up on his offer sooner?”

She shrugged, frowning. “I do not know. I suppose it was out of loyalty, really. But today Mr Thomas has destroyed any remaining loyalty I had for him. If he is so willing for us to part company and for me to put my skills to good use elsewhere, then who am I to argue?”

Neville blinked at her, grinning lopsidedly, before gazing at her in undiluted adoration. “Oh Lily, you’re a _wonder_. And…I’m to _marry_ you! What _have_ I got myself in for?” 

She smiled at him broadly, the warmth of her love for him burning brightly within her, and took his hand in hers, and brought it to her lips, pressing a gentle kiss to his knuckles. “That, my dear Neville, remains to be seen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lily's dreams are references to events occuring in series 3 and 4 of the Jago & Litefoot audios, in case you were wondering (at the time of posting, the first 5 series are all on spotify, in case anyone is interested)


	10. Bad Dreams

The wedding of Lily Hunter and Neville Jones was a quiet affair, unattended and unnoticed by the world at large. They wore their Sunday best, and celebrated alone, with a picnic lunch in the first park they had walked in together (the strange looking waterfowl was nowhere to be seen), before Neville surprised her by taking her to a small, mildly shambolic and reasonably priced photography studio to mark the occasion. Later, once the prints had been developed, Lily proudly hung the portrait of the two of them, arm in arm, above the mantelpiece, and once Neville had adapted her necklace-watch, as they had started calling it, she carried his portrait within it, as if it were a locket. He, meanwhile, kept a copy of her portrait on his desk in the back room.

After they left the photography studio, they returned to the watch shop, to the home that was now shared between them both. Neville offered to carry Lily over the threshold, but she declined, pointing out the fact that he would probably injure himself in trying, drop her and injure her too. They stepped through the door hand in hand instead. It was, after all, the safer option.

The following months passed relatively smoothly, barring the occasional heated but minor argument as they adjusted to sharing each other’s living space, until they had fallen into a routine that worked well for the both of them, and had learned each other’s habits and idiosyncrasies, even coming to anticipate the other’s needs before they had even arose.

One of the first things Lily did after she moved in was to turn her attention to the much neglected furnishings, much to Neville’s great bemusement, for it had never occurred to him that he was permitted to furnish his home with anything other than the basic necessities. Lily soon rectified this terrible oversight, and their home grew more comfortable and less sparsely decorated with each passing month, and though he was mildly resistant at first, he soon stopped protesting. Lily suspected that was largely due to the addition of the second-hand armchair, which, whilst ugly, was extremely comfortable, and provided them with somewhere to curl up together by the fire. Many an evening was spent that way, sitting and talking, or with Neville reading her stories, with Lily curled in Neville’s lap, or Neville sitting on the floor leaning against her legs.

Some days, she would help Neville out in the shop, counting out his stock of spare parts to help him order the things he was running low on, posting communications to customers and suppliers so he could get on with his repairs, bringing him tea and food when things were busy or when he was so engrossed in his work that he had forgotten to eat, and occasionally even dealing with customers, or else she would simply sit and watch him work, so he was not alone in his workshop with only the sound of ticking clocks for company. 

When not at home, Lily could be found behind the counter of Collins the Baker’s (Neville was a frequent customer). Mr Collins had been extremely enthusiastic when she had told him she finally accepted his offer of employment, and as she had predicted, he paid her rather well, and was so delighted to have her in his employ at all that he had agreed to her request to work only half the week, thus allowing her to spend more time at home. Overall, he was proving to be a far more agreeable employer than Mr Thomas had ever been. Mr Thomas, incidentally, had been determined to attend their wedding, until he discovered who her new employer was to be, and swore furiously that she had betrayed him, and that he would never speak to her again. Lily was delighted.

And so time passed, the days creeping by in a haze of work, of watches and bread rolls and clockwork and Mr Collins’s superior currant buns, and each other, of long hours spent strolling in the park, arm-in-arm; of evenings spent reading and talking and stealing kisses in the ugly armchair; of her enthusiastic but debatable attempts at cooking and his inevitable fond despair as he took over to prevent her from setting the place on fire; of talking for hours about everything and nothing at all; of Neville tripping over Lily in his hurry to clean up after her when she had barely made any mess at all; and of long nights spent exploring one another’s bodies before falling into a deep and occasionally dreamless sleep. 

That was not to say the dreams had stopped, of course; they continued, as bizarre and as confusing as ever. Neville started insisting they each kept a stack of index cards and a pen on their respective bedside tables, so they could write down whatever strange scenarios they had dreamed of the moment they woke up. 

The dreams were a frequent topic of discussion over breakfast, where they would debate whether the virus-infected commander had ever been revived from being frozen or if he had been permanently abandoned, or whether the people of the planet Phaidon were called Warpsmiths or Warpwrights, or they would swap theories as to the unknown fate of the unpleasant criminal character Arkadian, or else they would return to a frequent discussion as to why they could never seem to remember what, when Leela introduced herself, she said she was a warrior of; why they could never remember the name of her people. 

The nights grew long, and the weather cold, and the final months of the eighteen hundreds scuttled hurriedly past into the realms of history, the winter slipping by with them frequently huddled together by the fire, buried under layers of blankets to ward away the chill, and before they knew it, the year 1900 had quietly crept up on them, the new year continuing in much the same way the old one had.

The only difference the new year brought with it was that they had finally – albeit tentatively –agreed on an order for their dreams; they were far from certain it was correct, and still did not really know what to do with the many dreams of mundane everyday incidents such as striding down corridors, but they were making progress in their quest to make sense of it all, even if they were far from truly understanding what it all meant. 

They marked the anniversary of the day they first met by returning to their old haunt, the tea-room, somewhere they had not been in some time due to how much their lives had changed. The woman behind the counter raised her eyebrows when they walked in, smirked when she saw Lily’s wedding ring, and served them tea and a currant bun without being prompted.

The first day of March found Lily at their nearest market, shopping for groceries, and humming to herself happily. When she had left, Neville had been sitting in the workshop with an untouched cup of tea and a frown, frantically polishing and polishing again the pocket-watch a new customer was due to collect that morning, a customer she had not seen, but Neville had described as appearing alarmingly well-to-do, with an oddly unnerving air about him. 

Lily smiled at how flustered Neville had seemed about the whole thing. The shop had been doing very well, of late, and they had begun to discuss the possibilities of him expanding the business, of him potentially taking on an apprentice, or perhaps them even moving somewhere larger. They had agreed that they would probably have move to eventually, after all – though they had not had any luck so far, they would surely one day have children, and though their small flat was sufficient for the two of them, the thought of raising multiple children in the somewhat confined space gave them both a headache. 

If they did eventually have cause to move away, Lily would be sad to leave. Though on the small side, the flat above the shop was home, the centre point of an ever increasing number of happy memories, though she supposed the same could be said about the shop itself. It was not truly the building itself that she considered home, she had realised, but the person she shared it with, and whatever happened in their future, wherever they ended up, that would become home too, because they would make it so together. 

A pointed cough caught her attention, and she blinked, and smiled apologetically at the grocer behind the market barrow, realising that she had been standing staring vaguely into space whilst her mind wandered, absently holding a potato. She paid, placed the potatoes in her basket, and walked away ready to go home, hoping to catch a glimpse of this mysterious upmarket customer who had left Neville so frantic and concerned, when a flash of bright yellow caught her eye. 

She turned, pausing to watch a young flower girl and her brightly coloured barrow of spring flowers. Lily grinned again. Perhaps one more purchase would not hurt. 

When she returned to the shop, she peered cautiously through the window before she entered. The shop was not empty; Neville was in conversation with a customer, so she let herself in quietly, not wanting to disturb the transaction. Neville caught her eye and gave her a lopsided half-smile of acknowledgement, and she let herself through the counter hatch. The customer glanced at her, and nodded courteously, the ghost of a smile flickering across his face. 

He was tall, and very distinguished looking. His suit was well-cut and looked to be expensive, and his silk tie had a peculiar branching leaf pattern on it; he had a smart black hat which he had placed upon the counter. His face, framed by neatly parted greying dark hair, was handsome; his cheekbones were sharp, and he had an elegant nose, and his eyes were alert. They seemed deep and unfathomable – and somehow terribly familiar. 

“The workmanship is truly spectacular,” he was saying, as he examined a pocket-watch. His voice was captivating, rich and deep, as smooth and dark as layer upon layer of velvet. “I can find no fault in it. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it is in better condition than it was when I bought it.” 

“I… Oh! Thank you, sir,” Neville said, flustered, his cheeks tinged with pink. 

The customer nodded. “No, Mr Jones, it is _I_ who should be thanking _you._ And now, alas, I must be on my way. The whirligig of time awaits no man, as they say. Good day Mr Jones.” He put his hat on, only to tip it to Lily, “Mrs Jones.” 

He turned smartly on his heel and left, the jangling of the shop bell on the door the only sign he had ever been there at all. 

Neville stared at the door. “It’s strange,” he said, as if to himself, “I can’t help feeling that I–” 

“That you know him? That he is familiar? Yes,” Lily said quietly. “I felt that too. I have never seen him before, not when awake, nor in my dreams, and yet…” 

“And yet I am certain I know him from somewhere, and I don’t just mean his first visit here. Yes.” 

“He was very well-dressed to be coming here, even more so than you described before.” 

“I thought so too. I suspect he could have had his pick of all the finest watchmakers in London – the world, even – and yet he chose me. I don’t understand it.” 

She smiled at him as sweetly as she could muster. “I understand perfectly.” 

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh yes?” 

“Yes,” she said, and put on a solemn, mystical voice, “It is because he is your mysterious benefactor.” 

He groaned. “And there was me thinking that you’d stopped all that nonsense _months_ ago.” 

“Never,” she pouted. “All joking aside, I do still understand why he would choose to come here.” 

“You do?” 

“Yes.” She stepped forward so they were facing each other. “It is because,” she kissed him on the cheek, “you, Neville Jones,” she kissed his other cheek, “are extraordinarily –” she kissed him on the tip of his nose, “– talented.” She kissed him on the lips, and he smiled as he kissed her back. 

“You flatterer,” he said, when they broke apart, “what are you after?” 

“Nothing! Can a wife not compliment her husband every once in a while from the goodness of her heart?” 

“Hmm.” He frowned and nodded at the bunch of daffodils peeking out from her basket. “Is there any particular reason for the flowers?” 

“No.” 

His frown deepened in suspicion. 

She sighed fondly in mild exasperation. “They are for you.” She presented him with the daffodils, and he took them, smiling faintly. 

“Why?” 

She shrugged. “There is no reason. I simply wanted to buy you flowers.” 

He blinked, and gazed at her softly with the expression of pleased bemusement he reserved for the occasions when her actions had taken him by surprise, or reminded him of the strength of her feelings for him. “Thank you, Lily. I’m touched. Truly. They’re beautiful.” 

He frowned. “Although… I admit that I have never quite been able to shake the feeling that holding a bunch of flowers is somehow deeply inappropriate. I wish I could understand why. It’s entirely irrational, of course, and that only serves to make me more uncomfortable.” 

She snorted. “That is ridiculous. _You_ are ridiculous.” 

“Am I, now?” 

“Mm-hm. But I love you all the same.” 

He blushed, and she grinned. She would have thought that after so many months of marriage, he would have got used to them saying that to each other, but even now, he blushed every single time, regardless of who had said it. 

He placed the flowers carefully on the counter and wound his arms around her waist. “Is that so?” he said, pulling her closer, his pink-tinged face pre-emptively deepening in colour, “well I suppose, if that’s the case…” He leaned his head down to whisper in her ear, “…I love you too.” 

She grinned, and wrapped her arms behind his neck, nudging his face with her nose until he moved away from her ear, his eyebrows raised. Her smile widened, and she pulled him into a deep kiss. And if any customer happened to wander in whilst they were kissing? Well, she thought, they would just have to wait.

* * *

_It had been a mistake. He’d known it was a mistake from the moment Romana first mentioned it, but still the mission went ahead. He’d known it was a mistake, a terrible mistake, and he’d been right._

_And now he lay alone in a cold, empty bed, having woken from fitful sleep, searching for Leela’s warmth, and finding nothing but a stark and lonely absence in her place._

_She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be. Leela could not be gone. He refused to allow it. Yet more and more time passed since that fateful day she flew off on a mission with a treacherous Renegade, and still she had not returned; still he slept alone._

Neville jerked awake, heart facing, overwhelmed with sheer, cold dread, and rolled over, convinced he would find himself alone. 

But no, Lily was there, asleep, curled up on her side with her back to him, her warmth a beacon in the darkness, and he reached for her, curling himself around her sleeping form and wrapping his arms around her so he could feel the reassuring beat of her heart. 

She was here, and she was alive, and he was not alone. 

Lily stirred. “Neville?” she mumbled sleepily, “you are shaking. Are you well?” 

“Bad dream,” he muttered into the back of her neck, “that’s all.” 

“Me too,” she whispered, “I dreamed… I dreamed of the day Leela lost her sight. Not the incident itself, but afterwards, when she was told she would not see again. She was calm, until she was left alone, and the… and then she cried. And it was horrible. She never cries.” 

Neville said nothing for several moments, trying to rearrange the pain of the dream into words. “In mine… Narvin was alone. Leela had disappeared, had gone on some sort of mission and never returned, and he was alone, and when I woke up his anguish was still so strong I thought… for a terrible fleeting moment, I thought you were gone too.” 

She drew in a sharp breath, and then wiggled around to face him, cupping his face gently in her hands. “You are not alone, Neville. I am here. It was just a dream. A bad one, yes, but still only a dream; it did not truly happen, it was not real.” 

“But…” 

“But it feels real, I know. For a moment, when I awoke, I thought I could not see. And then I remembered that I have good sight, and I cannot see because it is dark.” She kissed him softly, and wrapped her arms around him, pulling his head onto her chest and stroking his hair. 

“If we dream about scenes from a life, it makes sense that not all the dreams will be good, for not every moment of living is enjoyable,” she murmured. 

“I wouldn’t call the rest of the dreams _good_ , even if they are better by comparison.” he muttered dryly, “The number of times I’ve dreamed their world is ending is getting ridiculous.” 

She snorted softly. “That is true. I find myself looking forwards to the ones where Leela is hunting, or sharpening her knives, or eating fruit. It makes a change from the ones where society is collapsing.” 

“Hm. Sometimes when I have endless dreams where they’re at war, I find myself actively looking forwards to the ones where Narvin is in his office, doing paperwork – not that there’s any paper involved, of course.” 

“Does that not get boring?” 

“No. I always feel strangely content waking from the paperwork dreams. I think Narvin must be in his element in those.” 

“Ha. I imagine he is.” She sighed. “Go to sleep, Neville. Rest. I shall chase your nightmares away.” 

He snuggled into her. “Not if I chase yours away first,” he mumbled into her side, his eyelids already heavy with sleep. 

But as time progressed, it became apparent that neither of them could chase the other’s bad dreams away. The following week was one of tossing and turning, of waking fearfully in the middle of the night and finding comfort in each other’s arms, a week of exhaustion and dark eyes, nodding off in the daytime only to be abruptly woken by a ghostly memory of pain or screaming. 

It didn’t fade with time. The weeks passed, and they endured it as best they could, their minds providing them with a constant stream of the worst moments from their dream counterparts’ lives, their tempers fraying in their waking hours as they fought against their exhaustion, doing their utmost to comfort and support one another, whilst battling the sleep deprivation-born instinct to argue about petty and insignificant matters. Appalled, they would catch themselves before anything unforgiveable was said, and stumble into one another’s arms and hold each other tightly, apologising over and over again whilst insisting it was not the fault of the other, before agreeing to blame the nightmares, with each kiss, each touch, becoming all the more meaningful in their determination to prevent everything from falling apart. 

Lily frequently awoke with tear-stained cheeks, her dreams plagued by Leela’s grief at discovering the truth of her husband’s disappearance, at seeing his corpse and wishing to join him in death. Often, she would wake trembling, with the fear of being forced into becoming the President of a corrupt version of Gallifrey, or with anger at having been shown a glimpse of the world she could not see by a trickster, and knowing it to be false. 

Neville in his turn was subjected over and over again to feeling Narvin’s future lives being wrenched away from him, leaving him hollow and dejected for hours after he woke. Sometimes, he would find himself seeped in his counterpart’s regret at his cold and unfeeling past decision to remove an entire planet and its people from ever having existed, or else he would wake with his heart racing with the unnameable terror of being stalked from the shadows by a heartless and cruel version of Leela whilst their surroundings collapsed around them. 

The horrors their imaginary counterparts had faced – or in some cases, been the cause of – felt never-ending, and they seemed to become more real, and more threatening, with each passing night. 

April dawned to find them sitting at breakfast, glassy-eyed and exhausted from another night of disturbed sleep. Lily was distractedly stabbing the handle of a spoon around the marmalade jar. A dollop of marmalade landed on the table. She didn’t notice. Neville blearily turned the pages of yesterday’s newspaper, his gaze blankly gliding over the jumble of tiny words, taking nothing in. 

“This is ridiculous,” Lily said, leaning forwards and putting her elbow in the spilled marmalade and trailing the ends of her hair in her tea, “My mind has turned to smog. We cannot go on like this.” 

“I agree,” he said through a mouthful of yawn, “but I’m too tired to think of anything intelligent to suggest.” 

She poked the edge of his newspaper sluggishly. “Perhaps there is something in the classi– classif–” she yawned, and tried again, “In the classified section.” 

“Quacks, the lot of them,” he scoffed. 

“Perhaps they are. But I cannot think of anything else.” 

“Hm.” He rifled blearily through the paper until he found the right page. “Let’s see… help wanted, lots of improbable and highly toxic sounding medicines that will probably kill you, a variety of advertisements, private detectives and ‘infernal investigators’, multiple quacks professing to cure all ills–” 

“Wait!” 

“What?” 

“Go back to the one about ‘infernal investigators’” 

He frowned at her. She seemed more alert, somehow. “Why?” 

“Never mind why.” 

“Very well,” he said dubiously, and looked back up the page. “‘Jago and Litefoot, Investigators of Infernal Incidents’. Hm. I can’t see how they’d be of any use.” 

She blinked at him, slowly. “I… I have heard of them. I do not know why. It is… it is like that customer you had a month ago, that strange feeling of knowing that he was somehow familiar to us but not being able to explain why. And it is the same with this Jago and Litefoot. I have never heard of them, and yet… somehow I think I have.” 

“Ah. You wish to visit them to discover if their faces are as familiar as their names.” 

“Yes. But not only for that. I… I do feel that this is somehow the right thing to do…” she sighed in frustration and shook her head. “Oh, I do not know. But we may as well start there. Is there an address given?” 

He nodded. 

“Then I shall call upon them this morning. Will you join me?” 

“No, I’m afraid I can’t. I have a customer due to pick up a clock.” 

“That overlarge cuckoo clock?” she asked hopefully. 

“Yes.” 

“Oh thank heavens for that. Every time I have finally reached a state of solid, dreamless sleep, it has woken me up again.” 

“Likewise. I shall be very glad to see the back of it. It was – if you’ll pardon the pun – a nightmare to mend.” 

She winced, and he strongly suspected that she did not pardon the pun in the slightest. 

A short while later, once they had mustered up the energy required to proceed with the day (not to mention, to clean up the marmalade), and once he had pinned her hair up for her (something he had turned out to be surprisingly adept at, and did every morning, within half the time it used to take her to do it), Neville unlocked the shop, and Lily was ready to go out. 

“Take care,” Neville said, as she crossed the workshop, “Pay attention when crossing the roads – watch out for cabs.” 

She smiled at him archly as she stepped through the counter and came to join him. “Now why would you need to say that?” 

“Because I know you, Lily Jones – perhaps if you recall a small incident when we first met?” 

“Once, Neville! That happened once! And besides,” she smiled slyly and draped her arms loosely around his shoulders, “I for one am very glad that incident occurred. It has improved my life a great deal. I am delighted to be able to blame it for my marriage.” 

The impulsive need to give her a lecture on road safety was overridden by the sudden urge to kiss her, which he did. Passionately. For quite some time. 

He would have continued to kiss her, but for an awkward clearing of the throat in the doorway behind them. They broke apart, startled. His customer had arrived, and was studiously avoiding all eye-contact, staring intently at the doorframe, blushing furiously. Neville’s face burned. 

Lily coughed, and let her arms drop from his shoulders. “I had best leave you to your customer.” 

“Ahem. Yes.” He took her hand. “Good luck. I hope… I hope they can provide the advice we require.” 

“So do I.” She squeezed his hand, and pulled away. “I shall see you later, my love.” 

He nodded. “Until then.” 

She smiled that glorious smile of hers, turned and left. As he watched her retreat down the street until she disappeared around the corner, he was struck with a deep discomfort. It was wholly irrational, and yet he could not help but compare it to Narvin’s sense of foreboding before Leela’s ill-fated mission, and that pervasive feeling of dread that culminated in him never seeing her again. 

Perhaps it was the sleep-deprivation, or perhaps the dreams were finally taking their toll, but Neville could not shake the feeling that the fate that had befallen Narvin and Leela was soon to strike again, and that he and Lily were standing directly in the line of fire.


	11. Old Friends

Lily had left home feeling hopeful, with a sense of purpose, a sense that finally, she might find some answers, and that they would soon be able to enjoy uninterrupted sleep once more. But as she neared her destination, she became increasingly uncertain, the pit of her stomach filling with a growing feeling of dread at what she might discover when she got there. Part of her was quietly wondering whether this was a good idea, and whether there were some things that were best left well alone. 

She turned the corner and double-checked the address she had written down against the street sign. Yes. This was the place. She walked slowly down the street, checking the house numbers, studiously ignoring the prickles of familiarity that were stirring in the back of her mind, until she stopped, outside a perfectly normal, ordinary looking house, and stood still for a moment, staring at the door, her shoulders tense, her heart beating far too fast. 

She took a deep breath and tried unsuccessfully to push away the increasing feeling of trepidation. Logically, there was no reason for her to be feeling this way; it was a perfectly respectable looking house in a perfectly respectable looking area. There was nothing untoward about it in the slightest. 

Except of course, despite her never having been here before, it seemed terribly familiar. 

Steeling herself, she climbed the steps and knocked on the door. There was a pause, the muffled sound of approaching footsteps, and then the door opened, to reveal a man with light hair in his middle years, who stared at her in evident amazement and startled, wide-eyed delight. 

“Leela!” 

Lily gasped and stumbled back a step, and stared up at the man in horror. No. _No_. Not only did he too seem worryingly familiar for reasons she could not quite articulate, he seemed to think he recognised her. He had called her _Leela_. 

She gaped at him, her heart hammering frantically against her ribs, her stomach tight with writhing turmoil, as if she had just awoken from another of the more unpleasant of the dreams and was still experiencing its after-effects. 

The man’s smile had faded into an expression of concern, and so she forced herself to speak. 

“No!” she said, sounding far more affronted than initially intended, “No, you are mistaken. My name is Lily Jones.” 

The man blinked, and frowned, clearly thrown by this simple statement. “I… I see. My apologies, Miss Jones.” 

“Mrs,” Lily corrected flatly. 

He blinked in surprise again. “Oh! Please accept my most sincere apologies, Mrs Jones. It’s just that… well. You look… startlingly like an old friend of mine, alike enough to be her twin.” 

“I have no siblings.” 

“Ah. I see. I take it there is a reason for your visit?” 

Lily nodded. _This_ was something she could manage, at least, more so than being mistaken for a figment of her imagination by an unnervingly familiar man she had never met before. 

“Yes. I am looking for two people by the names of Jago and Litefoot, in the hope that they may be able to help me and my husband with a… with… with something that is very difficult to explain.” 

“Ah, I see. Well, Mrs Jones, you’ve certainly come to the right place.” He gestured to himself. “My name is Professor George Litefoot, and I would be delighted to offer you my assistance. Please, come in.” 

He stepped aside to allow her to pass, and closed the door behind her, before leading the way onto a comfortably furnished parlour, where a second man was sitting drinking tea. 

He glanced up when she entered, and nearly dropped his teacup in surprise. 

“Leela!” he roared, rising to his feet with great enthusiasm. 

“Ah ah ah, no, Henry,” said Professor Litefoot hurriedly, “this is not Leela.” 

“Eh? Undercover mission, is it? You know, I though Ellie was seeing things when she said she thought she’d seen you; it seems I owe her an apology.” 

Lily blinked. “Who?” 

The man named Henry frowned. “Ellie! Ellie Higson of course, who else? Yes, it must’ve been about a year or so ago now. We were dealing with a shifty shape-shifting extra-terrestrial menace last year, and it had slyly given us the slip in a park. Damn thing eluded us by pretending to be a bird, and a dashed peculiar looking thing too, couldn’t tell if it was trying to be a duck or a goose, and we ran straight past it, oblivious to its elusive ways. Anyway, Ellie said she thought she’d seen you, sitting with a chap with a dubious beard near the pond. But by the time we’d dealt with the blasted alien, you’d gone.” 

Lily swallowed uncomfortably. She knew when he meant. That day in the park, the day she and Neville had walked together for the first time. They had had a light-hearted argument about a strange looking bird. Neville had said he had seen a woman staring at them, at _her_. She had forgotten about that, until now. 

“I… I am sorry,” she said, her voice trembling as she fought against the rising panic within her, “I do not know the woman you speak of. I am not the person you believe me to be.” 

He frowned. “Eh?” 

Professor Litefoot cleared his throat. “Henry, this is, ah, Mrs Lily Jones. She has come to us in the hope we may be able to offer her our assistance.” 

“Eh?” He stepped closer and peered at her in confusion. Lily shuffled uncomfortably under his increased scrutiny in a way that rivalled Neville’s own nervous habits. 

“Mrs Jones, “continued Professor Litefoot, “this is my good friend and colleague, Mr Henry Gordon Jago.” 

Lily nodded at Mr Jago awkwardly. They both saw her as another person entirely, and it made her sick to her stomach with nerves, so much so that it was almost painful. She briefly entertained the thought that perhaps they too were plagued by the dreams, but she dismissed this idea as quickly as it arose. The Professor had called Leela a _friend_. That alone indicated that he did not recognise her from a dream. 

Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Professor Litefoot gestured at the teapot. 

“Tea?” 

She swallowed and shook her head. “No, thank you.” He stomach was churning too much even for tea drinking. She wished they would stop looking at her like that, with those expressions of polite curiosity and thinly veiled familiarity and concern. It was becoming unbearable. 

“Well, perhaps you should start by telling us why it is you sought our help?” 

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can do that.” She took several deep breaths, to calm her fluttering heart and mind, and thought hard about what to tell them, what to say, where to start. 

“Ever since I can remember,” she began, “I have had a series of strange dreams...” 

As she told them of the dreams – carefully avoiding mentioning the name of her counterpart, for the moment – she watched their expressions closely. They seemed puzzled, but alert with keen interest, and when she told them of meeting Neville, and of him sharing her dreams, they both leaned forwards, their intrigue all too plain to see. 

“So, to clarify,” asked Mr Jago, “this man is the same curious character in your dreams as he is in his? And vice versa?” 

She nodded. 

“Hmm. How peculiarly perplexing.” He paused. “I take it you are still in contact with this gentleman?” 

Lily raised her eyebrows. “I married him.” 

“Oh!” 

“We have been happy together, very happy indeed. But recently, the dreams have taken an unpleasant turn. We have both been suffering from constant nightmares, as our minds have decided to show us the worst things from our dream counterparts’ lives. Neither of us has had a good night’s sleep for a month now, and it is starting to take its toll.” 

She paused, and sighed heavily, and met both their gazes. “That is why I am here. We have tried to find answers to the dreams, by placing them into what we believe is the order of the story they are trying to tell us, but that has not really given us any answers. We know more of the lives of the people we dream ourselves to be, but that has not helped us to understand _why_ we dream of them.” 

“Hmm,” said Professor Litefoot thoughtfully, “well, dreams aren’t usually our area of expertise, but I think we can make an exception for you.” 

“There is more,” Lily said quietly, and looked away. It was easier to tell this part to the window, it seemed. “I only came here because when I saw your names in the newspaper advertisement, they sounded familiar, though I have never heard them before. This house too, seems familiar.” 

She swallowed, and took a deep breath. “And when I got here, you both took one look at me and called me Leela. _Leela_. The name of the person I become in my dreams.” 

She turned to face them, and caught a glimpse of the last of a silent conversation, spoken only through their eyes, that they had clearly been having whilst her back was turned. 

“Neville said, long ago, that he feared what we may discover if we explored our dreams too deeply. Suddenly I find myself concerned that he was right to be afraid.” 

They were silent, frowning in compassion and uncertainty. The nerves that had been briefly quietened whilst she spoke raised their ugly heads once more, screaming at her and making sly suggestions that she was not who she thought she was, leaving her stomach tight with nausea. 

She clenched her fists, and forced herself to keep breathing slowly and evenly. No. She would not give in to fear. She would be brave, as brave as she knew how to be, as brave as she dreamed Leela was. She would ask the question, as daunting as it was, and she would listen to the answers she dreaded. 

“The Leela you claim was your friend,” she said, as calmly as she could manage, “tell me about her. I wish to compare her to the woman in my dreams.” 

Litefoot nodded slowly. “Yes… that’s a good idea. Leela… Leela was…hmm. How shall I put it? Leela was a breath of fresh air.” 

“Oh yes, you could certainly call her that,” chuckled Mr Jago, “we first met her, ooh, over a decade ago now, surely? She came here with her friend, an impossible gent of an unearthly persuasion, who simply called himself the Doctor.” 

Lily swallowed, the nerves clenching eve tighter. This was not what she wanted to hear. “I… I have dreamed of a Doctor, and of Leela travelling with him.” 

“Hmm, well. Leela was a warrior, you see, and a fearsome one, and clever too, in her own way. She was alarmingly terrifying with a knife in hand, or often without, she was spectacularly skilled in the martial arts, and she frequently fought fiercely and fearlessly, and saved our lives so many times, but she was never without care and compassion.” He smiled in reminiscence. “She seemed proud of being a warrior – she always said it as though it were a part of her name. She would unfailingly introduce herself as ‘Leela, warrior of the Sevateem’.” 

A sharp pain lanced through Lily’s mind, and she gasped in shock, holding her hand to her head, her eyes watering.

“Mrs Jones?” Litefoot asked, alarmed, “are you quite well?” 

“That word…” she breathed, “The moment you said… said… my head…” 

Mr Jago frowned, confused. “Eh? I’m afraid I’m a trifle confused. My words have caused you physical pain, you say? All I said was that she called herself ‘Leela of the Sevateem’.” 

“Oh!” Another sharp jolt of pain reverberated around her mind, and she screwed her eyes shut as she fought against it. She took several deep breaths, and opened her eyes to see two faces of deep concern, both of whom seemed worryingly fuzzy around the edges. 

“Every time you say that last word,” Lily gasped through the ever increasing headache, “I get a sharp pain in my head. The second time was far worse than the first, and now my head, it aches so much.” 

Mr Jago looked at her in confusion. “What, ‘Sevateem’?” 

“Argh!” The stabbing pain jabbed its way through her mind like knives, and the resulting headache grew, until her entire mind seemed to throb in sharp white agony. 

“Henry!” scolded Litefoot, “For heaven’s sake man, stop saying it, you’re making her worse!” 

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” said Mr Jago, abashed, “May we be of assistance in any way?” 

She went to shake her head, but it throbbed angrily in response, and she winced. “No, I do not think there is.” 

The word seemed to have taken hold in her mind, repeating over and over again, _Sevateem, Sevateem, Sevateem,_ the knifing pain worsening each and every time. 

Blurrily, she looked around. Jago and Litefoot were not alone in seeming fuzzy around the edges. The whole room seemed hazy, and oddly gloomy too, as though someone had dimmed the lamps. 

‘But the lamps are not lit,’ she thought vaguely, ‘it is still day-time’. 

She blinked, and realised that she could no longer make out their facial expressions. Everything had become an uncertain blur, and she felt herself swaying on the spot. 

“I would like it known,” she said unsteadily, the world swimming hazily before her, “that I am not usually prone to fainting fits.” 

Her knees buckled. 

The world went black. 

She dreamed.

_She was a girl, and her mother was dead, and the tears were burning in her eyes but she tried not to cry, because she was going to be a warrior one day, and warriors don’t cry…_

_She was running through the forests of her home, and she tripped, falling at the feet of one who bore the face of the god she refused to worship…_

_She was on a strange new world, one of the many places she had been, and she knew that she would stay here, with the guard with the charming smile, to live, and to learn, and to love…_

_The voice of a man, infinitely old and eternally wise, echoed in her mind, impelling her to find the president. A new friend was made, and an old friend was lost, seemingly forever…_

_She was standing by a railway, staring into the new face of her dead husband. She turned her back and walked away, weeping for the person he had once been, weeping for the husband she had lost…_

_The planet was at war, Gallifreyan against Gallifreyan, Time Lord against Time Lord. The bomb went off too soon, and her world turned dark…_

_They were on another Gallifrey, the three of them, and they were stranded there. Filled with rage, she left them for the company of the newly freed, forging her own path away from their shadows…_

_The daleks had come for them, but she was not afraid. She met them in battle, and was glad, for Narvin was by her side, determined to make a good end, so different from the person she had once thought him to be…_

_She was screaming at Romana in fury, and Romana was screaming back, each furious with the other over the incident with the Monan ambassador…_

_Early morning sunslight was streaming through the gaps in the blinds, and for the first time of many, she was waking with Narvin by her side. He was already awake, and was staring at her in quietly delighted bewilderment, and so she smiled, and pulled him close…_

_She was falling through the Time Vortex, for ever and ever, and yet for no time at all, silently screaming as she fell through Eternity…_

_She was so, so, old, all her long years spent on Gallifrey finally having caught up with her, and she closed her eyes as the blackness surrounded her._

_“Oh no you don’t,” said a familiar voice from long, long ago, delicately lifting her up from off the ground, “you’re not dying today. Not on my watch.”_

*

Leela opened her eyes.

She blinked, sat bolt upright, and bunched her hands into fists. “IRVING BRAXIATEL! I AM GOING TO _KILL_ YOU! I shall track you down and stab you in each of your black scheming hearts!” 

She swung her legs off of the sofa she had been placed on and rose to her feet steadily, and began pacing the room, silently fuming at the arrogance of Time Lords. She was furious. She was supposed to be dead, and she had made her peace with that. Her time had come, and it had been well overdue, after a long life well lived, a life far longer than it ever should have been, and she had accepted that it was her time to die. Yet Braxiatel had turned up, and not only had he stolen that from her, but made her forget herself and become another. He had a lot to answer for. 

A nervous, polite cough caught her attention. Jago and Litefoot were standing side by side, staring at her in well-mannered confusion. 

“Mrs Jones?” 

She smiled broadly and shook her head, moving towards them and placing her hands on their arms. “No. I am Leela once more. _Thank you_ , my friends. Oh, it is _good_ to see you both again!” 

They stared at her in delight, but their confusion had not faded. “It is a relief to know it _is_ you, Leela my dear,” said Litefoot, “we were both somewhat confused by your assertions that you were not. I must ask you: what happened? What’s going on?” 

“I… I am not certain. I do not fully understand all that has happened, or why, but… It was as if all my memories, along with everything that makes me who I am, were locked away in a room in my mind, and without them I could be shaped into another, one like me in so many ways but at the same time, different. Sometimes in dreams, it was as if the memories were trying to escape, but they could never fully succeed, like a person putting a hand through the bars of their prison. A small part of them can leave, but not the whole, and without the whole they cannot truly escape. They can only dream of freedom.” 

She frowned. “But… then you spoke the name of the people of my birth, my tribe, and it was as if it were a key. By speaking the word ‘Sevateem’, you unlocked the room my memories were trapped in.” She paused. “At least, that is how it felt. I do not know how it works. So thank you, my friends, for your help.” 

“Ah,” said Jago, still looking bewildered, “But why had you forgotten in the first place? And who is this Irving fellow, and why exactly have you made a dramatic declaration to deal deathly vengeance upon him? That seems somewhat excessive, surely?” 

“It is his fault I am here,” Leela scowled, “it is his fault my memories had been imprisoned and I had become another, though I do not understand why he did it.” 

“I see. And what of your husband? You said he had the same dreams as you. Does this mean that he is also not who he thinks he is?” 

She froze. Oh. _Narvin_. 

He was safe, and he was alive, and he had survived the war, and he was _here_ , in London. They had unknowingly been reunited for over a year. And he was currently under the mistaken impression that his name was Neville. 

“Narvin,” she said, suddenly breathless with anticipation and worry alike. 

Jago and Litefoot frowned at her questioningly. 

“I have to go now.” 

“But–” 

“I will return, I promise, I will return and answer all of your questions, but now I must go home.” 

“But why?” 

She turned and grinned at them, already halfway out the door. “I have to get Narvin back.” 

She took the front steps two at a time and left the house at a run, with a fleeting impression of them staring after her in confusion. She didn’t bother shutting the door behind her, she just ran, silently cursing her heavy skirts and the way they slowed her down, and the fact that her legs seemed to be tiring far sooner than she was used to, ignoring the scandalised glares of other pedestrians as she flew past them, leaving uproar and disruption in her wake. Normally, she would have felt guilty, but for once, she found she did not care. 

After all this time, after the horrors and fears and temporal confusion of the war, after the ache and hopelessness of their long, unwanted separation, she was going to see Narvin again. 


	12. An Honourable Man

Neville wiped the thin, barely discernible layer of dust off the top of the cabinet in the back room, and half-smiled with vague satisfaction as he caught sight of the empty space previously occupied by the cuckoo clock. He would be more pleased to see the back of it if he were not being plagued by a pervasive, lingering sense that something was terribly wrong. The feeling had been lurking in the back of his mind all morning, ever since Lily had left on her search for answers. 

He checked the time. It was nearing midday, and she still wasn’t back. He hoped that simply meant that Messrs Jago and Litefoot were providing many helpful insights, and not that anything bad had happened. 

The shop bell rang, and he sighed, and put down the dust-covered cloth. It was time to deal with another customer, it seemed. He really wasn’t in the mood. His concentration had been in shreds all morning, and it would continue to be so until Lily returned. 

The shop door slammed shut loudly, and the angry sound of the bell ringing again was followed by the metallic clunks of the door being locked. Neville frowned, and hastened to the workshop to see that, to his overwhelming relief, Lily had returned, and was turning the sign in the door over from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. He had been worrying needlessly, then. She had returned, and she was unharmed. 

“Lily?” 

She turned, startled, and he realised she was breathing heavily; her face was flushed, her hair in disarray, stray strands sticking up all around her face. 

He blinked at her in bemusement. “Have you been… running?” 

She nodded, and let herself through the counter hatch. “This body,” she said with a disgruntled snarl, “is not in good condition. That run should not have tired me out as it has; I am out of practise. I shall have to change that.” 

Neville frowned. “I... I see.” He eyed the door, and glanced back at her. “Why have you shut the shop?” 

“We cannot be interrupted.” 

“I see,” said Neville, even though he really didn’t. The overwhelming relief he had felt upon seeing her safely returned and the briefly entertained hope that there had been absolutely nothing to worry about was already fading fast. Something had happened, that was for certain. 

“I take it you found something out, then? Something that may help us?” 

She nodded again, hesitantly, and chewed on her lip with an intense frown. His own frown deepened. She seemed… apprehensive. As if whatever it was she had discovered was going to make things worse. And that was not all. Perhaps he was imagining things, but she seemed to be holding herself differently to normal – her posture seemed more alert, somehow, though he wasn’t entirely sure why he thought that – and her eyes were flickering over his face, studying his features intently, eagerly, even, as though it was over a year past, and she was seeing him for the first time. 

“Lily, my love? Are you alright?” He placed a hand on her arm, and she stared at it, and then at him, and then back at his hand, her eyes wide. 

“Lily?” 

She smiled weakly at him. “I am fine,” she said, “I am more myself than I have been in a long time.” 

He raised an eyebrow dubiously. “Forgive me, but you don’t seem it.” 

“I suppose I do not, to you.” 

He wasn’t entirely sure of what to make of that rather cryptic comment, so instead decided to ask about her discoveries. “So… what is it that you have found out?” 

“They…” She hesitated. “They knew me. Only… they did not know _me_.” 

“Eh?” 

“They knew me as… someone else.” 

Neville blinked. “Oh. You mean…” 

“Yes. So I told them our story, about the dreams, and then asked them to tell me of her. And then… Mr Jago told me the name of m– of her tribe, and I remembered all, simply by the sound of the word ‘Sevateem’.” 

“Seva-what?” 

“Sevateem. The name of her people.” 

“Is… is that the word we can never remember?” 

“Yes. Have you a headache?” She raised her eyebrows hopefully. 

He blinked in confusion. “No. Should I?” 

“Did the word not help?” 

“Help what?” 

She frowned, disappointed. “Oh, perhaps not. What about… ‘Patrex’?” 

He stared at her questioningly, and she stared back, peering at him intensely. 

“You have no headache?” 

“Only one of confusion… Are you sure you’re alright? 

She waved a hand at him vaguely. “I am fine, do not concern yourself. Are you sure these words do not shift the barriers or locks in your mind?” 

“Barriers? Locks?” 

She studied him searchingly, and sighed. “Oh, this is hopeless!” 

“What’s hopeless? _Lily_! Tell me! What _happened_?” 

She did not respond, simply bit her lip and frowned in thought. 

He studied her again, closely. Her posture was upright, alert, poised as if ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. And the way she was looking at him… what _was_ that? It was something between love and sorrow, joy and apology. What possible reason could she have for looking at him like that, with that strange mixture of hope and sadness? 

“I thought that would work,” she said, almost to herself more than to him, “It worked for me, so why should it not work on you too?” 

What did she mean, ‘work’? Unless… no. _No_. She said that Jago and Litefoot had recognised her, but not as Lily Jones. Before she had left, she had said their names seemed familiar, for some unfathomable reason. And what was it she’d said, just now? _‘I remembered all._ ’ 

He stared at the woman before him, and at the familiarly different way she held herself, and the air she had about her, with a dawning realisation, the slow seeping horror of it settling on his shoulders and in the pit of his stomach like lead weights. 

“You’re not Lily,” he said quietly, his voice trembling with this unpleasant revelation, “you’re Leela.” 

She jerked her head sharply in his direction, her eyes wide with surprise. Her expression and posture softened in gentle concern, and she stepped carefully towards him and met his gaze. 

“Yes. I am Leela.” 

He choked back a sob and staggered backwards, away from her. “No,” he whispered, his voice breaking on such a simple word, “no. _Lily._ ” 

Leela said nothing, simply stood there and surveyed him evenly, but sadly. 

“What have you done to her?” he gasped, heaving in huge gulps of air in an attempt to hold back the threatening tears, “What have you done with my _wife_?” 

She swallowed and bit her lip. “I have done nothing. She is here,” she said, and brought her hand to her head, touching her fingers to her temple, “Lily is here. She was a part of me, and she always will be. I have all her memories, her experiences.” 

“But you’re not _her!_ ” he yelled, suddenly furious with this impostor, this woman who bore his wife’s face. “You’re just… someone impossible, from a dream. You’re not _real._ But she is. She’s my _wife_!” 

He paused to take a deep breath. “Bring her back. You bring her back, _now_.” 

She regarded him sadly. “I cannot.” 

He glared at her, and she recoiled, a spasm of pain flickering across her face. The emotion was gone within a moment, her face smooth and calm as if she had not reacted at all. 

“You _can’t_ or you _won’t_?” 

She smiled sadly, though he wasn’t sure at what. “Both. I do not know how to bring her back, and even if I did, I would not. I am myself again. Wholly and truly myself again. It is as if I have woken from a dream of someone else’s life.” 

“I know the feeling,” he muttered, staring at her brokenly. The anger of the previous moments had completely dissipated into the ether. He couldn’t recall ever having felt quite so desolate. He felt all for the world like a mirror that had been brutalised with a large hammer, shattered into millions of shards, ruined and incomplete. 

“She’s my wife.” He choked, staring at the floor. “She is my wife… was my wife.” 

“Yes,” Leela said softly, “and she loved you deeply. For being Neville. Not for being Narvin, nor any other reason.” Though her face remained calm, her voice shook when she spoke Narvin’s name.

_Narvin._ Neville frowned, an icy discomfort settling in his stomach. “The… the dreams. If you are really Leela, then… are the dreams true?” 

“Yes.” 

“All of those impossible things we dreamed… they all really happened?” 

“Yes.” 

Neville was now deeply uncomfortable. “If… if the dreams are real, if Lily is really Leela, the woman we both dreamed of, the person you – _she_ dreamed she was… then am I…? No. I can’t be someone else. I _can’t_ be!” 

“You are.” 

“I can’t be _Narvin_!” His voice jumped several octaves and he staggered further away from her. 

“You are.” 

“No! I can’t be… I am Neville Jones, not Narvinectralonum! Besides – I’m human, I can’t possibly be him; I only have one heart!” 

She frowned. “Yes...” she said slowly. “You do only have one heart.” She began to pace the room, her hands behind her back and her brow furrowed in thought.

Hmm. Perhaps ‘pace’ was the wrong word. It was more of a ‘stalk’. If he were a wild animal, he thought he would be becoming rather afraid about now. It occurred to him that was probably the panic at this whole, impossible situation talking, and that he was thinking utter nonsense, and he should probably stop it, and at least try to focus his attention on her. 

He did so, just as she froze, mid-stalk, and a slight smile dawned across her face, her eyes sparkling in sudden realisation, like the sun peeping out from behind a cloud on a grey day. 

“Of course!” She turned to him, grinning. “I have remembered something Romana once told me, long ago, about _fob-watches_.” 

He frowned at her, entirely nonplussed. “Fob-watches?” he asked blankly, resisting the urge to grandly gesture around them and point out the many fob-watches and other similar devices that surrounded them, it being the workshop of a watchmaker. 

“Yes.” Her gaze flickered to his waistcoat pocket. “Does it not strike you as strange that you, someone skilled in the art of mending watches, carries a watch that does not work, that does not even open?” 

“I—” 

“Surely you must be capable of fixing it?” 

“Well… yes?” 

“So why have you not done so?” 

He frowned at her, unfathomably uncomfortable. “I– I’ve never really thought about it.” 

She smiled, almost triumphantly. “That is exactly my point.” 

“I don’t understand,” he said, “It’s just a watch, a broken watch. It’s nothing special.” 

“And if it is broken, and not special, why must you carry it around? You wear it every day, and yet you say it holds no importance to you. May I see it?” 

“If you insist,” he muttered, and passed it to her. She did have a point, he realised begrudgingly. Why _did_ he always wear it? It was something of an embarrassment, to be a watchmaker, and to be asked for the time, only to be unable to give it, as the only watch he ever carried with him was broken. 

She took the watch, and studied it closely, tracing her finger over it as if following a pattern, which he thought peculiar, as he didn’t recall it ever having any decoration. She held it to her ear, her head tilted, poised as if listening to something far away, and she smiled faintly. 

“I believe that I remembered correctly,” she said. “I believe that if you open this watch, you will become Narvin again, body and mind.” 

He stared at her, unsettled. “You truly believe that?” he asked, his voice hoarse. 

“I do.” 

Now it was Neville’s turn to pace the room. He turned the whole situation over and over in his mind, trying to make certain that he’d covered it from every possible angle. ‘ _That’s a very Narvin-like way of doing things’_ , an unwelcome voice whispered in his mind, and he stopped pacing. 

He wasn’t who he thought he was, and neither was she. Lily was gone, lost in the mind of someone else, and he could never get her back. He thought back to his life before he met her. It seemed so cold and empty in comparison to the life he had led since that fateful meeting outside the tearoom. He wasn’t sure if he could ever go back to the way things had been before. He wasn’t sure if he could cope with being alone again. 

He wasn’t who he thought he was. But he had a life; he had memories and experiences of his own. According to Leela, he was truly Narvin. But that didn’t mean that he, Neville Jones, was any less real. He _was_ real. He _was_ alive. If he did what she wanted of him, he would be gone. Though he would live on in Narvin’s memories, he would no longer be Neville Jones. She was asking him to die. 

“You do realise what it is you’re asking of me?” he asked, without looking at her, “you want me to open this, and to essentially die, to become another?” 

“Yes,” she said quietly, “but I will not force you. If you wish to remain as Neville, I understand. And I am sorry for trying to change you earlier. I should not have done that. It is your choice, not mine. Lily… Lily had no say in the matter. One moment she was herself, the next, she was gone, and my memories had returned. I should not have tried to do the same with you.” 

He shook his head, swallowing back the lump in his throat at the mention of Lily’s end. “I understand. It was automatic, done out of desperation, in the hope that I would become the person you wish me to be, without me even realising it. I think, had I been in your position, I would have done the exact same thing.” 

He sighed. “I want Lily back. You want Narvin back. We can’t both have what we want.” He turned to face her. “There is no way I can ever have Lily back. You don’t know how, and would not be willing to permit it anyway.” 

She nodded, once. 

“I am not sure how to go on without her. _Especially_ with you wearing her face and claiming that it was always yours. I can never see Lily again, _my Lily_. But… I can give you the chance to see Narvin again.” 

Her eyes widened, and he glimpsed within them a spark of hope. 

“You are willing to… to…?” 

“Yes. It strikes me that, if the four of us are in actual fact two people, then only two can be happy. You and Narvin were torn apart, long ago, and through my dreams I’ve seen the pain that caused. Now Lily and I have been separated too. Like this, neither of us will be happy. But if I at least _attempt_ to open that watch, then perhaps you and he might have a second chance at the happiness you had before your lives were disrupted by war.” 

She gazed at him softly. “You are brave,” she said quietly, “and honourable. I will not forget you.” 

He nodded awkwardly, unsure of what to do next. “I… ah… I really did love her, you know.” 

She smiled that incredible, glorious, devastating smile of hers, and for a brief, shining moment, he could pretend she was Lily again. 

“I know,” she said warmly, “but more importantly, _Lily_ knew. And she loved you too, so much. She never let herself forget how glad she was that she met you.” 

He cleared his throat, his face warm. “Thank you.” 

Her smile turned sad, and she stepped towards him, and pressed the watch into his hands. She did not let go, however, but simply clasped her hands around his, and met his gaze. 

“No, Neville Jones,” she said quietly, “Thank _you_. I mean it. I will not forget you, and nor will I forget the bravery you have shown in making this decision. It is a great deal to ask of anyone, to sacrifice themselves so another might live. And you are doing so willingly. You have the heart of a warrior.” 

Neville blinked, blushing. The heart of a warrior. The highest compliment Leela could possibly have to offer. 

She tiptoed, leaned forwards, and gently pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Good luck,” she said, and let go of his hands, stepping back, giving him space. 

He managed a slight half-smile, and inclined his head at her courteously. “You too.” 

He stole one last glance at the woman who wore Lily’s face, took a deep breath, and turned his attention to the watch. 

He stared at it, running a finger around the unfamiliar circling, swirling patterns. They seemed so obvious now. How could he have never noticed them before? It felt unusually warm to the touch, and somehow, it seemed to pulse; the beating of two hearts sounding in his ears. He could no longer focus on anything other than the watch. Funny, considering how little attention he’d paid it over the years. 

He frowned. He could hear… whispers. They seemed to emanate from the device, snaking their way through the air and surrounding him. At first, they were unclear, inaudible, too quiet, the words a sibilant hiss, the syllables blurred together. But as he focused, the whispers grew clearer, and he was surrounded by the ghostly voices of a past he could not remember. 

_“Yes, I am a coward, and no, I’m not a warrior, alright?”_

_“I have often said Narvin, that one day, if you are not careful, you will destroy the universe by making a mistake.”_

_“Oh my Lady. What have I done?”_

_“Someone with a particularly intelligent, quick and very, very devious mind…”_

_“It’s why you can’t sleep. The guilt, weighing on you.”_

_“War will not make a savage of me!”_

_“You_ are _my President.”_

_“You are not the man you used to be Narvin, and that pleases me more than anything.”_

_“Without you Leela, what do I have left?”_

_“I need Narvin. I… trust him.”_

_“I needed you… to show me how to be a better Time Lord, a better Gallifreyan, a better me.”_

_“So the black sheep of the Patrexi returns…”_

Neville opened the watch, and the world glowed golden and white.


	13. Reunited

The glow around him faded, and he shut his eyes, so he could properly adjust to being himself again. He drew in a deep breath, intricately aware of every atom, every molecule, every cell. A strange warmth, almost like regeneration, had spread throughout his body before slowly fading away, leaving behind a slight tingling sensation as he took stock of his newly rewritten self, suddenly more conscious of his body than he had been for the past six years. He could feel the blood rushing through his veins, could feel it pulsing to the beat of his two hearts. He could smell every compound, every element, in the air around him, and he could name them too. He could sense _Time_ again.

He opened his eyes.

And there, standing before him, was the most welcome sight in all the universe. There she was, silent and staring, concern deep within her bright blue eyes, her head cocked to one side, her expression uncertain, quizzical, hopeful, and so very familiar.

“ _Leela_.”

They stared at each other wide-eyed, both breathing heavily, silently open-mouthed, scarcely able to speak. They stood there for what could easily have been Eternity, motionless, as if enchanted, staring, searching each other’s faces as if seeing them for the first time. 

The watch, now nothing but a cold and empty shell, slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor with a clatter, and the spell was broken. He reached for her wordlessly, his breath catching in his throat at how her expression was slowly melting into that devastating smile that always stole his breath away, at how that smile grew and grew, wider and wider, despite the tears in her eyes. 

“ _Narvin,_ ” she breathed, and rushed forwards, half-crying, half-laughing, and threw her arms around his neck.

He responded in kind, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her as close as possible, burrowing his face in her neck, breathing her name aloud over and over again, even as she murmured his, tightening her grip around him as he tightened his around her, suddenly afraid to ever let her go again, lest she disappear for ever. They were both shaking, he realised, as they held each other tighter and tighter still; together their shoulders heaved, their hands shook, and as one their knees gave way, and they sank to the floor, weary with grief and joy alike, each still refusing to let go of the other.

They slumped against the side of the counter, and he pulled back, just enough to be able to look into her eyes. She gave him a weary, watery smile. “Well,” she said, her voice somehow even and calm, “it is good to see you, Narvin.”

He let out a shaky bark of laughter. “That’s putting it mildly. Oh Leela.”

He shook his head, trying to find the right words to convey all he wanted to say, and not succeeding. Instead, he raised a hand to stroke her cheek, hoping the simple, gentle gesture would say all that he could not. She closed her eyes, and smiled sadly, raising her hand to cover his, and tilting her head so she could kiss his palm. She sighed softly and shifted position, curling herself up and settling in his lap. He helped her adjust her heavy skirts, pressed a kiss to the top of her head, wrapped his arms around her again and held her close, and watched as she adjusted herself so her head rested against his chest, with her ear at the very centre. Narvin instinctively knew that she was listening to the beat of his hearts.

Several long, quiet moments later, Narvin frowned, sighed, and said, “Next time I see Irving Braxiatel, I am going to wring his neck.”

Leela sat up, scowling. “Not if I stab him first.” 

He snorted somewhat hysterically, and buried his face in her neck until his shoulders had stopped shaking. “We may have to restrain ourselves, at least until after he’s told us exactly why he gave us both false identities and false memories, before abandoning us here. I don’t know about you, but I would quite like an explanation.”

“Hmm.” Leela sounded dubious. Clearly, she had been quite enamoured with the idea of Braxiatel scared witless and faced with the sharp end of a knife. Narvin couldn’t blame her. The part of him that was not overjoyed at being reunited with Leela or relieved at having his own mind back was quietly seething with rage at Braxiatel, and at his sheer audacity. To rescue them, only to strip them of everything that made them who they were, and to abandon them? Braxiatel had a lot to answer for.

He considered the state he had been in when Braxiatel had found him and winced automatically. Of all the people to have found him there, in that terrible place, half-dead and delirious, it had to have been _Braxiatel_. Being saved by a Renegade would have been less humiliating.

“Are you alright?” Leela asked him softly, her concern evident in her gaze.

Ah. She hadn’t missed the wince, then. He couldn’t say he was surprised.

“I… was remembering where I was… _how_ I was… when Braxiatel…” He trailed off, realising too late there was a tremor in his voice.

She raised a hand and ran a finger along his cheek.

“Later,” she whispered, “We will talk of that later. I think we have both seen and experienced things that are not easily forgotten. We will talk of them later, when we are both ready. But not now, not yet. Now I only wish to savour this moment. We are alive, and we are safe, and we are not alone. The past can wait until we are ready to face it, together. It is the present that concerns me now.” 

She settled her head on his shoulder. “I will say though, that I was…displeased with Braxiatel. When he found me, I was… I was old. I had accepted my fate, my death, after a long life well lived. By saving me he went against my wishes. But I am not as alone as I expected to be. You are here. That makes it easier to bear. Finally, I have hope again.”

“Perhaps that’s why he bothered saving me,” said Narvin dryly, “because he knew that if he didn’t, you would track him down and murder him.” 

“That is ridiculous,” Leela said flatly. 

“Is it? Perhaps, but Braxiatel does have a way of manipulating events for reasons known only to him, and that strikes me as just the sort of thing he’d do. After all, he randomly turned up here, had a watch mended, and somehow caused us a month of nightmares before disappearing without a trace. To his mind, I’m sure saving me only so you don’t stab him is a perfectly reasonable course of action.” 

“Hmm. Perhaps.”

She fell silent, and Narvin followed suit, each drifting in their own thoughts. All was quiet and still, save for the ever-present ticking of the clocks in the watch shop. Narvin thought of Neville, and of how this shop had been a place of sanctuary for him, and the way Lily had shattered that peace, and built that safe world for him anew, but with her as a part of it, much as Leela had done with him, so long ago. The pain of losing her had been unbearable, as bad as losing his regenerations had been, if not worse. Worse, because whilst he had eventually admitted the loss of his lives to others, when it came to the loss of Leela, he had told no-one, because he wasn’t in the habit of sharing his innermost feelings, and because no-one had known what she had meant to him. 

He had suspected that Romana had an inkling of what had been between them, but he hadn’t shared anything with her. He hadn’t wanted to. He had never found the words to tell Leela just how important she was, to tell her how he felt, so how could he now tell another? Another who was more than partly responsible for that loss, and who was dealing with losing her closest friend because of her own actions. So he had stayed silent, whilst all around him Gallifrey fell apart. 

And over a year ago now, he had found her, but neither of them had been entirely themselves. What Lily and Neville had had was not real, and neither were they. Simply fragments of two forgotten, broken people, trying to be whole, all the while being haunted by the glimpses of the true lives they did not believe in; mere shadows, reflections of who they were supposed to be. 

But that was not true. They had been real. Neville and Lily had been real, as real as he and Leela were. They had believed themselves to be real; to them, he and Leela were the imagined ones. Their feelings had certainly been real; their love for one another was far too vivid to have ever been imaginary. And now they were gone, so that the original inhabitants of their bodies might live once more. The thought left him feeling strangely guilty, which was entirely irrational. This was his body, after all. Neville had simply been looking after it for him. 

He raised a hand to Leela’s head and started carefully unpinning her hair, teasing out the careful arrangement he – or rather Neville – had created that morning, letting the glorious red-brown waves cascade around her shoulders. 

“Why–”

“So you look more like you.” 

“Oh.” She made no move to stop him and so he continued, until her hair was free and untamed once more. Once he had finished, she said nothing; simply ruffled his hair to alter the parting, before removing his neck tie. 

“So I look more like me?” 

“Yes,” she said, letting the tie fall to the floor beside the pile of hair pins. 

She curled up against him once more, and the quiet returned, and Narvin found himself wondering whether Leela had been thinking along a similar vein of thought, about her life as Lily. Her next question confirmed his suspicions. 

“Narvin?” 

“Leela?” 

“How much do you remember of being Neville?” 

“Almost all of it, I think. Why?” 

“I have realised something. We must continue to be them, to be Lily and Neville.” 

“What… what are you talking about? We are ourselves again. We don’t have to stay here anymore.”

“We do not _have_ to stay, but we have no choice in the matter. Narvin, we are stuck here.” 

He frowned. “What?”

She raised her head and gave him a very withering look. “Unless you happen to have a time ring hidden away somewhere, or a spare TARDIS pretending to be a cupboard, we are stuck here, living the lives of our other selves, until Braxiatel turns up again.” 

Ah. She had a point, there, one he would probably have realised a lot sooner if he hadn’t been quite so distracted by the familiar, much-missed feeling of Leela’s very human warmth in his arms, or the fact he now had a head filled with six years’ worth of someone else’s memories.

They were indeed stuck on Earth, in the year 1900. The level of technology available in this era, whilst not exactly primitive, was far from spectacular, and he very much doubted he would be able to concoct a makeshift time machine from scratch with the limited resources available. A computer, he could manage, perhaps. But a functioning time travel capsule, one that wouldn’t tear them to atoms and scatter them across the Time Vortex? Even he couldn’t manage that. 

Leela stiffened, and nudged him in the ribs. “I have just had another thought.” She sounded surprised, pleased and amused all at once, somehow. 

“Oh yes?” 

“We are married, Narvin.”

He froze. He had been so distracted by the relief of them both regaining their own memories and being reunited, that the reality of the lives they had been living in the meantime hadn’t fully struck him yet. 

He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “No we aren’t. _Lily and Neville_ were married.” 

“And they are a part of us. And as we are to continue living their lives until we find a way of leaving, we are married.” 

He swallowed. He, Narvinectralonum, was… married. _Married_. To _Leela_. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway. Though technically the marriage was not in their names, the people who had signed the certificate had worn their faces. They now carried those people’s memories. For an unknown length of time, for however long it took for Braxiatel’s plan to unfold, they would live as if they were their counterparts, as if they were married. Though his immediate reaction was one of alarm, the more he considered the prospect, the more he found that the thought of it was… not unappealing. 

It was hardly as if they were on Gallifrey, where he had been all too conscious of his every move being scrutinized and judged by calculating eyes, where any hint of their feelings for one another would have been met with scorn and disapproval, disgust even. This was not Gallifrey, where he had been careful to hide their affair from prying eyes, lest there be some scandal or another, lest some ambitious, manipulative pig-rat of a politician tried to use their relationship against them. 

Here, they were no-one. On Gallifrey, they had been a Coordinator and a Presidential bodyguard. Here, he wasn’t even a Deputy Coordinator. He was a watch maker. She worked in a bakery. Neither held a position of importance. And they already lived together, under the same roof. It was not like on Gallifrey, where they spent so much time sneaking into each other’s quarters, scattering possessions across both their homes, so that they were practically living in two places at once. Here they could be themselves, without fear of repercussions that could easily affect the whole planet’s future. And if there was anything the Time War had taught him, it was that the moments he shared with Leela were precious and irreplaceable, no matter the timeline or version of history that was being forced upon them. 

Leela nudged him gently again. “Narvin?” 

He raised a hand to her face and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and let his hand linger, as he took in every single freckle, every minute detail of her face, down to the last eyelash. “Yes, Leela?” 

“When we do leave here, we shall marry again, in our _own_ names this time, in a ceremony that is both Gallifreyan, and of the Sevateem. That is, we will if you are willing?” 

“We will?” he managed to squeak. He had forgotten how blunt she could be sometimes. He wondered how much more they had to rediscover about each other. 

“ _Yes_. I have never said this before, because I did not wish to stir the fear held in the hearts of Gallifreyans whenever feelings are spoken aloud, but–” She unwrapped her arms from around him and placed her hands on either side of his face. “I love you, you foolish Time Lord. I am young now. _Again._ And if it is my fate to grow old once more, it is you I choose to be by my side. As my husband.” 

Narvin blinked rapidly several times and swallowed again, his face burning. It was one thing to live the lives of their married counterparts; it was another thing entirely to undertake a marriage ceremony themselves. 

He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. There was no telling how long they would be stuck here, nor could they possibly predict how long it would take for Braxiatel to reveal his hand. They would leave one day, probably, but in the meantime, they had ample time to adjust to being married to one another before they completed the ceremony as themselves, instead of as Irving Braxiatel’s inventions. Narvin would have time to mentally prepare himself for such an emotionally honest undertaking as a wedding would be. 

He swallowed. There was nothing stopping him from starting that preparation now. What was that human expression, again? The one that Ace used sometimes, a long time ago. _‘There’s no time like the present’_. As a Time Lord, he was fully aware that wasn’t the slightest bit true, but nonetheless, it seemed apt, somehow. 

He pulled far enough away from Leela to be able to meet her gaze, and nodded shakily. “Y-yes. I would… like that.” 

Her eyes widened in delight. “You would? I… I thought you might need more persuading. I am glad that this is not the case.” 

He nodded, and traced a finger across her brow. “I would be… be…” he coughed, and tried again. “I would be… honoured… to be your husband.” He pulled away from her gaze and focused on the end of her nose instead. The way she was looking at him felt as though she could see right through him – and that was a distraction he could not afford, not now he was trying to be all that he had been trained not to be: open and honest. 

“Since...” He took a deep breath and stared determinedly at the freckles dusting the end of her nose. “Since you went on that mission, and we were separated, I’ve discovered what the Universe is like without you in it. I didn’t much care for it at all. It’s cold, and empty, and brutal. Or perhaps it always was that way, until you showed me otherwise. The War… it showed me how the time we have together is precious… and made me realise I… I don’t want to waste a single moment of it. Because…” 

He swallowed, and closed his eyes. Even the end of her nose was too distracting, now. “Because I… I love you, Leela,” he breathed, his voice breaking as the truth of it escaped him, “and… I’ve missed you, and… and I don’t want to lose you ever again.” 

She let go of his face and wrapped her arms around him so tightly, he thought that without the help of his respiratory bypass he probably would have suffocated. 

“I always thought I knew how you felt,” she whispered, “I saw it in your actions, even felt whispers of it when you permitted our minds to touch, but I never thought I would hear it out loud. Thank you.” 

“Let’s just say the war put things into perspective,” he mumbled into her hair, fully conscious of how much his ears were burning. 

She sighed, and loosened her grip on him enough for her to pull back from the hug. His disappointment at this was fleeting, however, because she kissed him instead. 

The kiss was times long past, it was human warmth and old treasured memories, stolen moments in hidden alcoves off of endless corridors, it was burnt orange skies and fiery red-brown hair, and the light of two suns and the warmth of her smile, and crimson fields and sleeping through second sunrise with Leela still curled in his arms, and it was Gallifrey at its best; it was hope, it was a glimpse of a better life, it was the end of loneliness; it was every bit a promise of the second chance of happiness Neville had sacrificed himself for. Most importantly, it was Leela. It was home. 

When they eventually broke apart, it was with some reluctance, with neither willing to move their face away from the others. Leela sighed, and pressed their foreheads together, before angling her face so her cheek rested against his. Narvin inhaled slowly, both to calm his wildly beating hearts and to breathe in the scent of her, to reassure himself that it really was Leela, she really was here, and she wasn’t going anywhere. 

“I should move,” she murmured, “Your legs must be starting to hurt, with me sitting on them like this.” 

“A little, perhaps. I don’t mind.” He ran a hand through her hair. “It’s worth it.” 

He felt, rather than saw, her smile at that. She seemed to hold him a little more tightly too. 

“All the same, we cannot sit on the floor all afternoon.” She pulled back, and studied him with a critical eye. “Tea?” 

He met her gaze, gave her a tired smile, and nodded. “Tea.” 

She smiled and stood up, and offered him her hand. He took it, and she pulled him to his feet, before leading the way upstairs. 

Several minutes later, after the tea had been made and they had had a minor argument over Leela spilling tea leaves all over the floor, they were seated opposite each other at the kitchen table, hand in hand, their fingers threaded together. They hadn’t let go of each other for more than a few seconds in all the time since he got his memories back. They didn’t dare to. Narvin knew it was irrational, but part of him was convinced that if he let her go, she would disappear again. 

Leela stirred her tea with her free hand, before letting the spoon fall to the table with a clatter. Narvin eyed the trail of tea droplets it had left behind it, which were now seeping into the wood, and realised for once, he didn’t care if it stained. There were far more important things to worry about. 

“Narvin? What became of Romana? Do you know?” 

He sighed, and took a sip of tea before he answered. “During the war, she and I were… separated. I don’t know what happened to her, in the end. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her roaming the streets of London, have you? I wouldn’t put it past Braxiatel to have abandoned her as well, and it would make life so much easier if she turned out to be here too.” 

“Oh. No, I have not seen her. I hope that, wherever she is, she is alright. I miss her.” 

“So do I.” 

“Ace too.” 

He sighed. “Yes. Ace too.” 

“And the war is definitely over?” 

“Oh yes,” he said darkly, “the war is over, and Gallifrey is… gone.” 

There was a silence. “I am sorry,” she said eventually. “I know how much your world meant to you.” 

“Don’t be sorry. The world I knew disappeared long ago, not long after you did, at the moment they decided to resurrect Rassilon.” 

Leela stared at him, aghast. “They did _what_?” 

He sighed. “Yes. It was as bad as it sounds. But a story for another time, I think.” 

“Yes. There will many of those.” She frowned. “I know I keep saying we must not start discussing the past now but… there is something I must know, something I do not understand.”

“What is it?”

“I am a warrior, and have gained many scars over the passage of my life. Yet they are gone, now. Why do I no longer have my scars? And why, if mine are gone, do you still have yours?”

Narvin frowned. “That… that is a good question, actually. You mentioned that you were… old… when Braxiatel found you?”

“I was. I was dying.”

He swallowed. He didn’t like how simply she stated that. Any sentence involving the words ‘Leela’ and ‘dying’ was not something he ever wanted to have to consider.

“Yet you are clearly alive, and have the appearance of being young. I’m not sure what he did to you to achieve that. Whatever it was, it must have worked similarly to regeneration: overhauling your whole body, rejuvenating every single cell, healing old wounds – your old battle scars included.”

“I see. It is strange, to have my skin unmarked by old wounds. My scars told my life’s story; they showed a history of the battles I have fought, all the trials I have survived. I do not like that that has been erased.”

He squeezed her hand in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion, and she smiled.

“I suppose you are going to tell me something about it being a fresh start,” she said.

“I considered it. But I thought you’d probably hit me.”

“You have enough scars of your own, you do not need me to add to your collection.” She frowned. “So… why have yours not disappeared?”

Narvin stayed silent for a few moments, to let the words gather before he spoke. Leela had been right: he was not yet ready to talk about it in detail. But he could manage a brief summary, as she had done.

“I was… injured… when Braxiatel found me. Badly injured, but not dying in the same way as you were. I suppose he would have used whatever his TARDIS med-bay had to offer to treat anything that was immediately life-threatening. All the old wounds were irrelevant. And so the marks they left behind remained.”

She nodded silently, and her grip on his hand tightened. She stared over his shoulder, her gaze distant and unfocused, her true age betrayed by her haunted expression, her eyes wearied by memories, so at odds with her unlined face. For that fleeting moment, she looked as broken as he had felt during the Time War.

It hurt to see her like that. She was the strongest person he had ever known, after all. But the Time War had been brutal. No-one could live through that and come out of it unscathed, not even if they were a Warrior of the Sevateem. He would help her heal, he vowed; he would help her recover, just as she would undoubtedly do the same for him. They were not alone anymore.

Her gaze strayed across room, and she frowned, staring at something behind him. She let go of his hand, and stood up, and crossed the room to the mantelpiece, and returned to the table holding Lily and Neville’s wedding photograph.

“We were other people,” she said softly, placing the frame carefully on the table and staring at it. “We were other people, with hopes and dreams of their own.”

“Their dreams weren’t their own, Leela, they were our memories.”

“I did not mean _those_ dreams. I meant it as in: their wishes for the future. They believed they _had_ a future. But they did not. We have taken it from them.”

“They were never really real,” Narvin said quietly, staring at the black and white image of their faces, forever frozen in one moment in time, “and Neville gave his life, such as it was, willingly, so that we might have a chance at our own again.”

“Their _lives_ were real, though. And Lily’s ended so suddenly. She had such an abrupt end,” Leela said quietly, “She deserved better.”

“If I know you, I’m sure you’ll find a way to honour her existence.”

“Oh, I will.” She considered the photograph carefully. “It was such a happy day, when this was taken. Neither of them could stop smiling. We will leave this portrait on the mantelpiece. We owe them that much, at least.”

He nodded. “I agree.”

They both stared at the image in silence for several moments more, until Leela frowned, and studied him questioningly.

“Narvin?”

“Yes?”

“Why was Neville Welsh?”

He grimaced. “I haven’t the faintest idea. Of all the things Braxiatel has done, _that_ is extremely high up on my list of things to interrogate him about: why he thought it necessary to give me a different accent, along with making Neville convinced that he had had a childhood so difficult he had forgotten it all in order to cope.”

“I agree Braxiatel should have given them both some happier childhood memories. But I liked your voice when you were Neville. Lily certainly did.”

He wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. He cleared his throat, and said, stiffly, “I am… not impressed with Braxiatel’s decision to programme my voice in a different manner for no reason. I would much prefer to avoid discussing the, ahem, _accent_ , in future, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Narvin, surely you realise if you continue to be Neville you must continue to use his accent?” Leela’s eyes sparkled mischievously. 

Narvin groaned. “I don’t know how to impersonate accents!”

“That is a lie. I seem to remember that you do a very good impression of the Doctor. If you can do that, you can occasionally use the voice you have had for the past six years.”

He glared at her. 

“You will have to phase it out,” she said, in an alarmingly matter-of-fact voice that seemed eerily reminiscent of Romana, “slowly soften it until you can use your own voice, and say that living with me for so long has affected you. Or,” she added, looking at him over the rim of her cup, “you could keep it. I would not mind.” She sipped her tea, smiling faintly.

Narvin sighed. He was beginning to realise that being married to Leela would mean a lifetime of her infuriating attempts to wind him up – something she was very talented at. That said, given that the alternative was a life without her, a life with nothing to look forward to but bad memories of past wars, he would take a lifetime of her gentle teasing any day.

Leela set her cup back in its saucer and returned her gaze to the photograph, her amusement fading, a frown creasing her freckled brow.

“Narvin? What would have happened if we had never got our memories back?”

He shifted uncomfortably. The same question had already occurred to him, but he had been studiously ignoring it. “I… don’t know. I suppose we… _they_ would have continued to live their lives, oblivious to the fact that they were ever anyone else.”

“They would probably have had children,” Leela said softly.

“Yes, I suppose they would have. Those children would have been just too young to fight in the First World War, but _their_ children might easily have been old enough to fight in the second. Neville might have died by that point, but Lily would probably still be around. She would have lived through it, seen the bombs falling. She would have lost her grandchildren in action.”

Leela took both his hands in hers and gripped them tightly. “Not everything comes back to war, Narvin.”

“Doesn’t it?” He didn’t like how bitter he sounded, and attempted to pull his hands away. Her only reaction was to hold on tighter.

“No,” Leela said firmly, “No, it does _not_.”

“This is coming from the _warrior_?”

“A good warrior should know how to live in peace too, Narvin. That is something we must both now rediscover.” She sighed. “No matter what the history of this time might have thrown at them, they would have been very happy together. I am certain of that.”

The crease in her brow deepened. “You say that Neville might have died by this future time you are imagining… does that mean that if you had never got your memories back, you would have died as a human?”

He nodded. “Yes. Neville would have died of old age or disease, and I would have died with him. Not that that makes much difference, really. I still don’t have any regenerations left. And this body… it’s been through a lot. I don’t know how long I have left. Oh, still longer than the average human lifetime, of course, but… nothing compared to what I once might have expected.”

“And what about me? I have already lived so long, for a human. And now, with whatever it was that Braxiatel did to prevent my death… will I live the length of a normal human lifetime now?”

He sighed. “I… I don’t know. Perhaps. But what he did must have been pretty powerful… there is every chance you may live longer than a human, shorter than a Time Lord.”

She smiled sadly. “Just like you.”

He swallowed. “Quite possibly, yes.”

“We could grow old together. I’d like that.”

He swallowed again. There seemed to be a lump in his throat. “So would I.”

They fell quiet, gazing at each other in sadness and in hope. Sadness, at all that had passed, and at how the past would still have a hold on them even as they looked to the future, and at the knowledge that dealing with it would not be easy. Hope, that they had each other once more, and would be able to help one another; hope born from the fact that they were both alive, and would be able to live together in peace until old age claimed them.

She narrowed her eyes, studying him closely. “You have lived as a human, Narvin,” she said, a hint of curiosity entering her gaze, “Now you have experienced that, what have you discovered? Do you now know what it is to be human?”

“Mine is the experience of one person, living in one place, in one time. How can I possibly learn what it is to be human from that?”

“The rest of us have to.”

Narvin didn’t know what to say to that. She had a point. He considered his life as Neville again, and the lives of everyone else he had come into contact with over the past six years or so. The culture was different, the surroundings were different, the level of technology was different, the basic biology was different but… people were people, no matter where in the universe they were from.

“I suppose… there’s not that much difference to being Gallifreyan, save perhaps the shorter lifespan – well, for _normal_ humans anyway,” he added, eyeing the unusually long-lived human before him, “Your lives are short, so you pack more in.”

“You mean, we actually remember to _live_ , instead of gathering more and more dust with each regeneration?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Something like that.”

“Well, I hope you do not forget all you have learned. I do not want you to start gathering dust like some ancient Cardinal, now we both have a second chance.”

He shuddered. “Perish the thought. But with you around, Leela, I think it’s safe to say that will never happen.”

She grinned. “Good. I am glad to hear it, _husband_.”

He felt his face warm. “And in that respect, I have already lived more than an awful lot of Time Lords ever did. Forming close attachments to other people for the sake of having that closeness, instead of for political gain, was never really the done thing.”

Her grin widened. “But you learned how to form friendships and fall in love despite that. There is hope for you yet.”

“Thank you for that… encouraging assessment.”

“Any time. So, since you are not planning to start gathering dust now that you are a Time Lord again, what will happen instead?”

“Well. What will happen is that we’ll stay here for however long it takes for us to work out how to leave, and we’ll take whatever the lives of Lily and Neville may throw at us – pies thrown by disgruntled bakers, in your case, I expect – and then we’ll leave, find Romana, and then hunt down Braxiatel and give him a good kicking. There will be no gathering dust involved in the slightest.”

“That does sound like a good plan. But what do you think we will do after that?”

He was quiet for a few moments. “Regardless of the outcome of our search for Romana, once it is complete… I think we will find somewhere to live out the rest of our days, together. Does that… does that sound like something you would like… _wife_?”

Her already wide grin broadened even more into an expression of unbridled delight. “Yes, Narvin,” she said, tightening her grip on his hands and slowly leaning towards him across the table, until their faces were a hair’s breadth apart, “I would like that very much.”

* * *

Time passed, and life went on.

Adjusting to the lives of Lily and Neville was a strange thing – it should have simple, given that they had all their memories of the previous six years. But they were not Lily and Neville; they were Leela and Narvin, and their lives had been so different from anything this time and place had to offer.

Leela often found herself thinking about what it had been like, being Lily, what it had been like to truly feel young again, without the memories, wisdom and experiences of a life as long as hers had been. She often found herself reflecting upon how strange it was, to live in a home, and to sleep in a bed, that was theirs, and yet not theirs at all but Neville and Lily’s, all at the same time. How strange it was, for them to have been people so alike and yet so different to themselves. How strange it was to have found each other whilst being other people, even with their dreams; how strange it was for their paths to have crossed, here in this sprawling grubby city of thousands of souls.

Narvin, it seemed, had few issues adjusting to living Neville’s life: he liked pottering around the watch shop, mending things, meticulously ensuring everything was in perfect working order. He certainly seemed to enjoy the time they spent together as much as she did, whether they were talking, arguing, making love, or simply enjoying the privilege of spending time in each other’s company. No, it was not Neville’s life Narvin had problems with, it was the time period.

As time passed, Leela increasingly felt that Narvin had a complaint for every occasion. Every day, he would find something new to rant about: the level of medical care available, the generally unhygienic living conditions that still persisted in many locations across the city, horses, the inefficiency of sending letters in the post, the poverty suffered by the working classes, the lack of temperature-controlled environments and the inefficiency – not to mention the danger – of using fire to heat buildings, the pointless division of the population by perceived gender, the illogical currency, the uncomfortable clothing and how much he missed wearing robes.

The latter point was something Leela was all too familiar with, given that he ranted about it at least once a week – and that was only if she was very generous about what exactly qualified as a rant. She tolerated his frequent complaints wearily until one day, she had had enough, and interrupted him whilst he was in the middle of bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t adapt one of his night shirts to be worn in the day because Neville would never have done that, and how impractical and pointless various accessories were.

“…and as for cuff links! I fail to understand why they can’t simply make shirts with sleeves that don’t flap about at the end! That way there would be no need to fiddle about with something as tiresome as–”

“Narvin!”

“Er… yes?”

“You think _your_ clothing is impractical? Everything I must wear is so restricting! The neckline is so high, it is too close to my throat, and I cannot run freely with all these layers, I cannot be myself. I would like to see _you_ cope with wearing many layers of long skirts, and petticoats, and a _corset_! I wear these clothes not because I want to, but because I must, and unlike _some_ people, I do so without complaining.”

He took the hint, and refrained from moaning about his clothing quite so much, after that.

True to her word, Leela had visited Jago and Litefoot the day after their memories had returned, and this time she brought Narvin with her. Whilst they were explaining what had happened, they had been interrupted by the rather unexpected arrival of a Sontaran in a butler’s suit who, after the uproar stemming from Leela’s automatic, angry response of challenging him to a fight (he eagerly accepted; there was no clear winner), was introduced as Strax, another friend of Jago and Litefoot, who, it seemed, was also a friend of the Doctor.

Eventually, Leela and Narvin were introduced to Strax’s friends Jenny Flint and her wife, the Silurian Madam Vastra. This was an unexpected turn of events that benefitted them both enormously. Leela was delighted to have someone to be able to hone her reflexes and combat abilities back to their former strengths with, by frequent sparring matches with both Strax and Jenny. Narvin, meanwhile, seemed rather relieved by the fact that he was no longer the only non-human around, and shared many an intellectually stimulating conversation with Vastra – and as he admitted to Leela one day, it was nice to have someone with whom he could share his general bemusement at the idiosyncrasies of humanity.

New friendships and the busyness of living other people’s lives aside, the shadow of the Time War still had a way of clinging to them; it never seemed far away. They still suffered from the nightmares that Lily and Neville had tried so hard to rid themselves of, but now the meaning of the dreams was all too clear: they were drawn from their own memories.

Gradually, they both found ways of opening up to one another about their experiences during the war, taking turns to provide each other with words of reassurance, a hand to hold, an open ear, and a shoulder to cry on, or to give the other space too, if that was what was required. Sometimes one of them would catch the other staring, lost to the tendrils of times past, and on those days they would hold each other that little bit tighter in the night.

Though at first it seemed that their memories’ constant attempts to drag them back into the war’s depths would be endless, the effects did lessen with time, the nightmares becoming less frequent. Memories would occasionally resurface, catching them off-guard, and the shadow of the war never fully went away; but the pain it caused faded as time went by, as they told each other more, and as Leela’s frequent reassurances to Narvin that he was not the sole cause of the war finally began to sink in.

Despite the spectres of the past, and despite the long list of their gripes regarding the era (both individual and shared) they still found the happiness that Neville had hoped to give them, with their friends, new and old, and with each other. They discovered that they greatly enjoyed living as a married couple (even if they were still as argument-prone as ever), frequently joking that it saved them the hassle of sneaking into each other’s quarters like they had had to do on Gallifrey. They still kept up many of Lily and Neville’s old habits, such as their long walks in the park, partly to keep up appearances, and partly because Leela enjoyed tormenting Narvin by dragging him around various nature-infested areas to see how far they got before he caved in to temptation and started complaining about it.

As winter approached however, Leela conceded to his complaints regarding the increasingly bitter, and in his words, ‘entirely unreasonable’ weather, and so one icy Sunday morning in late November found them huddled in bed instead. They lay curled close together, their limbs entwined, buried under several layers of blankets to ward off the chill, exchanging sleepy, languid kisses between snatches of conversation, unbothered and unhurried by the world at large.

“…poor man,” Leela said grinning, nuzzling her nose against Narvin’s, “he did seem confused by the change in your accent – and your attempt at an explanation did nothing to help matters at all!”

“My explanation was perfectly clear, thank you very much!” Narvin sniffed indignantly, looking somewhat miffed.

Leela had to bite her lip to stop herself cackling at the unabashed lie she had just been presented with. “You had no explanation to offer him! You simply spluttered at him for several minutes!”

“I did not!” he protested, his voice squeaking in high-pitched indignation.

Leela smiled broadly. She loved it when his voice did that. It was something so unmistakably _Narvin-like_ , her heart softened with fondness every single time. Even when he was annoying her. _Especially_ when he was annoying her. Or when, like now, she was purposely annoying him. She hugged him closer, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

“You _did_ ,” she said, grinning at him in a way she knew he found maddening, “In the end, I had to explain for you. Of course, that did not help much, for you had been making strange noises at him for so long that he did not find my explanation at all convincing.”

“That is a complete and utter falsehood,” Narvin sniffed.

“It is not! It is the truth!”

“If you believe that then clearly you must be remembering things incorrectly.” 

“I am not!”

“Then evidently, the timelines have been altered, for as I recall, I was perfectly eloquent, and we cannot possibly both be wrong.”

“Hmm. And if they _had_ changed, you, the mighty _Time Lord_ , would have noticed.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and wrinkled his nose, evidently struggling to come up with a comeback. Leela grinned delightedly, let him flounder for a few moments, before deciding that she should probably rescue him from having to think up a response to her blatant mockery, and so she kissed him instead.

He seemed to agree that this was the wisest course of action, and so the next few moments were lost to the lazy exchange of slow but quietly passionate kisses, kisses that could easily have slipped seamlessly into becoming something more, but for now, they were content to be just as they were, lips moving softly together, alternating between lacing their fingers together and gently, unhurriedly, running their hands along each other’s arms, until they slowly parted, and lay quietly regarding each other in a fuzzy daze of warmth and contentment

“You know,” Narvin murmured, gazing at her with fond, sleepy eyes, “I’ve been thinking…”

“Yes?”

“This… life that Lily and Neville led… it’s not terrible – confusion over accents notwithstanding. And whilst I’d prefer we eventually settled elsewhere, somewhere with a less imminently turbulent history, it wouldn’t be a bad life, if we had to stay.”

Leela raised an eyebrow. “You complain about something new at least once a week, if not daily.”

“I know. But I realised. All of that… it’s just background noise. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not the time or the place that makes a home, it’s the person you share it with. And for me, that person is you.”

Leela blinked, her heart fluttering strangely. His clumsy attempts at emotional honesty were improving of late. She had found that even the most poorly executed attempts often left her warm all over; tingling and giddy and somewhat weak at the knees, like some inexperienced adolescent lost to the pangs of her first romance. Now that he was finally starting to get the hang of it, every allusion he made to his feelings for her left her temporarily breathless.

“You are saying… you are saying that your home is wherever I am?”

He gave her a lopsided, serious half-smile. “Yes, I suppose I am. I could tolerate all the things that irk me about this era, if it meant I still had you.”

She kissed him fiercely. “My home is with you too. Always.” She stroked his cheek and met his gaze. “I am certain you will not have to tolerate it here forever. We _will_ leave one day, Narvin, I am sure of it.”

He nodded, frowning. “I know… but even if we don’t… I suppose what I’m trying to say is that… I think we’ll be alright, you and I.”

Leela smiled. “Yes. I think we will.” She wrapped her arms tightly around him, holding him as close to her as she possibly could. His face crinkled into a true smile, and he rested his forehead against hers, a simple gesture that had, since their memories returned, come to be a way of affirming to each other that they were alive, they were safe; they were not alone.

One day they would leave this place, leaving the lives of Lily and Neville behind; of that she was certain. Whatever Braxiatel’s plan had been, she was sure that it was not yet complete, and they still had parts to play in it. One day, they would leave, and they would find Romana, or at the very least discover her ultimate fate and mourn her loss, and remember her as they remembered the lives of Lily and Neville.

But until then, until the next chapter of their story began, they would remain here, hidden in the lives of people so alike to, and yet so different from them, and they would help each other to heal from the long-lasting, invisible wounds left by the Time War, and they would love, and they would live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S FINISHED!!!  
> THANK YOU so, so much, to everyone who's made it to the end, for your kudos, tumblr reblogs, and your wonderful, enthusiastic comments, your support has been absolutely incredible and it's been a delight to share the ramblings of my brain with you all.   
> And as for the future... I do have very very vague ideas for what a sequel might be like (well. I have a beginning, and a vague ending. As for what happens in between, who knows? Not me... But probably less obscenely fluffy romance, more time travel) but I don't know if/when I'll get around to writing it. I'd like to, though, so watch this space...


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